I HAD this dream just before new year that I woke up on January 1 2000 and found the Internet had disappeared – vanished into the ether from whence it came.
Somewhere, somehow, someone had pulled out the plug and it was gone along with the nerds and anoraks that had created it.
No such luck I’m afraid. Every day we get a fax – note that it’s a fax because e-mails now have no impact – from some organisation which tells us how many bookings we are missing because we are not part of their Net system.
Like builders, they will tell you that other organisations you are using are no good and that is why bookings aren’t coming through.
Have you noticed how e-mails have no effect any more? I had an e-mail the other day which was addressed to 150 companies. The beginning and the end of this message was so shrouded in meaningless gobbledegook and was so tedious to look at that I just put it to one side to read when I had a clear mind. As I very rarely have a clear mind, the chances of the missive getting serious attention are slim.
An attractive, personally addressed letter or fax is so much more effective. The novelty value has gone out of e-mails and normal tedium has set in. Every morning, we get e-mails asking us questions about our holidays.
It would be so much easier and more personal if we received telephone calls instead. We have e-mail addresses because everyone else has and we are told we are lagging behind the times if we do not. More often than not we have to follow up with a telephone call which could have been made in the first place.
And have you tried getting anywhere with these sites? Apart from general information or simple flight bookings, they have no content and most leads take you nowhere but to frustration.
Really, so far, the whole system is just hype and we have all fallen for it. I’m sure that even ordering groceries by telephone would be faster. Any company with the name ‘direct’ stuck anywhere near the title just turns me off. The word ‘direct’ means no advice and generally the inability to handle anything but the simplest request.
So I, like many others, am waiting anxiously for the realisation of the FSS promise on ‘real-time’ Internet booking.
The system will enable agents and customers to come straight into our own system, look and book without us knowing anything about it and at a fraction of the cost of viewdata.
If we are to believe what we are told, this is only months away.
In case you hadn’t noticed, enormous sums are being spent in advertising by so called e-companies to attract customers. Many of these customers struggle with making any sort of booking just to say they have done so. In their heart of hearts they know a telephone call would have been much easier.
However, if these companies get well known enough then, in due course, they should be a very attractive target for ‘real’ companies which are looking for an additional marketing outlet.
In the meantime, all of us have to cope with the mess, the hype and the incompetence which this new industry has dumped on us.