The dot-com stampede continues but I, for one, just cannot see exactly where it’s all leading. Everyone is rushing to set up sites and every day, we are contacted to provide site content.
Everyone that contacts us is convinced they have the answer. Many of them just do not have a clue about travel or how it works and want to use our know-how to make their fortune.
They do the rounds of tour operators and are surprised when all is not as simple as first envisaged. One person offered us a live-booking system.
What this actually meant was us dedicating a certain number of holidays on allocation to the system so that the site had what amounted to a free sale facility. Well, how many holidays could you block off so as to facilitate the arrangement? It would be an administrative nightmare for us if we were having to monitor various sites which were using this method.
What is very clear is that the industry as a whole, because the Internet is still so technologically primitive, will only feature late deals on the Net.
When I ask these Web entrepreneurs which operators are going to use their site, then you realise it’s the Teletext boys who are diversifying across to the Internet and featuring allocation on arrival-type holidays just to put bums on seats. The whole scenario depresses me.
There are a few serious sites and we are considering one like these because it is obvious a great deal of investment and thought is going into their development.
How complicated our lives have become. Selling used to be straightforward. Now it’s turning into a nightmare for any operator that still believes in quality and consistency.
We are in the hands of the ducking and diving brigade, the quick-buck entrepreneurs who assume they can quick-talk their way into a future at our expense.
We are often dealing with vultures and the real problems are still before us. No one has cracked the administrative problems of selling holidays on the Net, as is revealed in every article which outlines the tortuous difficulties of booking anything at all on-line.
The more I look at the whole problem (because it still is a problem and not yet an opportunity) I see the answer is still investment in the sophisticated development of one’s own site so as to complement the brochure and add to the overall marketing mix.
Our weakness is the amount of money that’s necessary to promote the site, although we now mention our site in newspaper advertising.
But at least we can monitor quality and reliability and deal efficiently with the enquirers the site generates. I do not want to end up as a supplier to a future Tesco-type.com with no identity of our own and beholden to those who want to make money with the least possible effort.
I still can’t see where it’s all going and how this is a sea change on par with the industrial revolution. For many, it is seen as a chance to make money without exertion or qualification.
But there are some incredible facets of the Net which make you believe anything is possible. Go into the Altavista search engine, click on your Web site, then click on ‘translate’. Within seconds your property descriptions are translated into French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish (more or less).