Flightblogging.com

I’ll have to admit to being caught up in the frenzy when Lastminute first came on the scene. They were pioneers of the dotcom bubble, yet somehow they managed to ride out the storm.

Back then, lots of people thought they had a good idea. They certainly had a great name - although there is still an association with booking late, and right now I’m trying to plan ahead.

Back then, lots of people said they’d been to the site, but few people said they’d bought anything from them. I have bought a couple of flights from Lastminute.com in the past, but right now I’m trying to get some concert tickets. I’ve bought a fair few of these this year, but am getting a little bit fed up with paying all these booking fees, so I thought I’d try going through a site that we theoretically have an arrangement with. I tried them last night for hotels in Antigua, and (admittedly just like 3 of the big four), they were useless at that too.

Last time I booked concert tickets through Lastminute.com was back in 2005. I remember them dragging me through several really annoying screens, and I remember getting so frustrated that I decided I would stick with them until I could confirm the booking - whatever it takes. I guess most users would have clicked away by then, but stubbornness was kicking in big time.

So I’ve just found out that Elton John is playing at the new O2 Arena - it should be a great night, but I’d still like to show my “support” to a site we work with. Lastminute doesn’t even have the event listed. Last week, they kindly informed me about new Prince tickets - 3 hours AFTER they had gone on sale.

So I hope they can pull their socks up, but in the meantime, it is back to See Tickets or Ticketmaster for concert tickets, and Expedia for hotels.

I guess I might be ventruing slightly off my cheap (or not so cheap) flights patch here, but I have been asked if we can push a few of the other consolidator websites, especially for hotel and flights packages.

The problem is that I am very stuck in my ways in this respect - if I am looking for hotels in the UK, I nearly always end up on either Late Rooms or Expedia, and Expedia certainly takes the crown for overseas bookings. Sometimes, I’ll give Superbreak a try - and to give them credit where it is due, they do often have some excellent deals on UK city hotels.

So last night I was looking for a hotel for one night in either Antigua or St Lucia, as I can’t find any flights that will get me from Nevis back to Barbados in the same day. When it comes to searching for hotels, I’m pretty flexible - naturally, I’d rather stay somewhere a bit fancy, but I still expect good value. This isn’t always easy to find in the Caribbean, but the starting point has to be at a hotel booking website which offers plenty of choice.

So here’s a simple league table of how many hotels each of the “big four” offered me in Antigua. I think that, for the time being, my loyalty to Expedia shall remain. They have even stopped referring to the “Royal Antiguan” as an “all-inclusive hotel” (see Hotel Snob blog) - about time!

How many hotels in Antigua does each site offer - for one night in early July 2007

• Expedia - 20+
• Ebookers - 2
• Lastminute - 4 (but one was actually in Gaudeloupe)
• Opodo - 2

If there’s three things that I hate, then Multimap has just scored a hat-trick:

1. Pointless website revisions, for no good reason.
2. Pop-up surveys asking what I think.
3. Pop-unders (but I might just forgive that if that is really needed for commercial survival).

Well, I’m not going to waste my time being another statistic. Far easier to say it here, where it might just get one or two people reading it. So, I used to love Multimap - no surprise here, it was simple, easy to use, and I loved the ability to zoom in to the 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey maps.

Move on to June 2007, and what have they done? If the new version wasn’t fiddly enough, they then want to test my patience with a survey asking me what I think. Let me tell you - Multimap to me was an excellent supplement to Ordnance Survey printed maps, and saved me having a vast library of sheets I wouldn’t use very often.

All I wanted to do on this particular visit was check a village name for a caption I wanted to put on a photo. Sure, that won’t earn Multimap any money, but nor would most of my visits. I would assume their revenue model works by having enough visitors that they can earn revenue from banner adverts. Capturing data about their users can help boost revenue, but all they needed to do was ask me to log in, and they could have add all the info about me that they wanted. Instead, I’ll be off to find another website. I could just go back to the old version, but I’m sufficiently annoyed by the (constant) popping up of surveys and other junk that I think I’ll do some hunting around first.

In the meantime, I simply want to acquire some ordnance, and explode it in their survey maker’s office.

I really hope we never make the same mistake here at Flightmapping!

JA, Coventry

Ex Multimap user.

Here at Flightmapping.com, we’ve never tried to pretend that environmental issues are easy to solve, or that we should just bury our heads in the sand.

But with all the hype which we are bombarded with every day, is there a chance for some more level headed discussion?

We certainly hope so, and if you think so true, please come and join the Envirorealists group on Facebook:

• Envirorealists

Antithesis of: Enviro-fundamentalism, eco-puritains, ecoterrorism, eco nazis, doom and gloom, environmental doomsday.

A few things we believe in (especially when it comes to travelling):

• We love this planet, but we’ve got to get around it somehow.
• We love buying nice things, but try and get as much use out of them as possible.
• We’re happy to do without some bits of useless technology - like GPS systems!
• We don’t think the world is going to implode tomorrow.
• We’ll do what we’re best at, respect our neighbours, and leave the complex science to the real experts.
• We don’t believe everything we see on Panorama.
• We know that Global Warming is a challenge - so is extreme poverty, sorting out the Middle East, controlling communicable diseases, and keeping the economy ticking over.
• We are aware that stress and depressive illnesses are two of the biggest challenges for western health systems. Sometimes it is nice to take a holiday to get away from our busy lifestyles, without feeling the guilt from the incessant bleatings of the green lobby.
• We just wish that organisations like Greenpeace would get their facts right for a change.
• We’d love to get hold of Tony Blair’s BA Executive Club card, and just wish he’d done something useful with all those trips he’s made.
• We don’t mind paying green taxes - if they go towards environmental projects.
• We’re fed up with all the hype against the aviation industry - especially when the recent doubling of APD has just has environmental groups salivating for more. How come domestic energy use, which is responsible for far greater emmissions, continues to get off Scott free?
• We’ll take the train, because it is a better use of our time.

It is a pity that Cheap Flights have chosen to stop working with affiliate sites like ourselves, but I am told they have some site modifications to make. They have made no secret of the fact that they intend to float later on in the year.

Cheap Flights published turnoved (according to recent travel trade press) is £18m. Profit margins are reported as being “healthy”, but have been previously reported as “around 20%”.

Their business model is largely based on some good “organic” search listings on Google, which are highly volatile - even that hallowed “#1 for cheap flights” has been knocked a few times recently. Cheap Flights is  a useful comparison tool on some routes, but the site provides no information about two of the largest airlines which actually provide cheap flights (Easyjet and Ryanair).

Sure, its a great domain, so if this business is really worth £200-250m, then that has to be great inspiration for all the other tavel websites out there. Assuming the 20% profit margin, their annual profits would be £3.6m, so we’re talking about multiples of 55 - extremely positive for an internet business.

I must congratulate Darren at Travel Rants for his excellent April Fool about selling out to Expedia!

Comments like this are absolute gems:

Being able to write on the subject from many different viewpoints that appeals to the average reader. Travel Blogs are a dime-a-dozen out there - yours is one of 2 that all of us in my office read every update of. The big companies need a guy like you to manage their blogs. We don’t want to read badly written travel reviews anymore and nor do we wanna be “sold” to when we read a blog. So I believed what I was reading about Expedia “buying” you out - its not totally out of the realms of possibility - maybe the price was a bit over the top, but not the actual possibility that it could happen.”

 It is often said that many a truth is said in jest, but I’m not sure how many Tripadvisor users really appreciate (a) that the site is owned by the same group which owns Expedia, and (b) just how much clutter they have to sift through to get the answers they want.

Naturally, for honest hotel reviews, I’d always recommend taking a look over at Holiday Watchdog, but Darren clearly has a style which is going to make me want to come back and read his blog more often - if only I wasn’t trying to cut down on all this random internet surfing!

I hope that we can make Flightblogging a useful user experience, which should become much more integrated over the next few days, as we link it in to the main Flightmapping site, but I’ll always bear in mind the following closing quote from the same comment for inspiration:

Thanks again for writing and managing this blog… as you can see by this post’s comments, you have many fans!

So Flightmapping’s blog has finally pulled back from the stand, and the engines are roaring in preparation for take-off. But somewhere in the front of the cabin, there’s a passenger who just won’t shut up about his travel experiences. Don’t get me wrong, he’s behaving himself and pretending to keep an eye on the hostess who’s giving a safety demonstration he’s heard a thousand times before, but he really just wants to get back on his soapbox. At least he gets to smile at the eye candy - and no, not said hostess in front of him, but all those other aircraft lining up for take-off behind him.

So it looks like Darren at Travel Rants and myself have plenty in common. Take a look at what he says about Gordon Brown’s new air tax swindle. We both agree that he’s conned us by calling APD an environmental tax, and then stuffing the cash straight into some over-paid and under-performing NHS administrator’s back pocket. Like me, he doesn’t like to drive - ok, he’s one better, he doesn’t drive - but we both like to use public transport, and yes, that DOES include planes!

So if ever I need any further inspiration to fuel my rants, I think I know where to look. I’m sure we’ll be speaking again soon.

Now, please keep your tray tables upright. If you find a sudden increase in blood pressure due to reading anything I’ve said here, please do remember that a large amount of it is either obviously tongue in cheek, or deliberately provocative. Please bear this in mind, even if you are a regular reader of my rantings.

Have a nice flight

James

Well as if this week hasn’t been eventful enough already, we seem to be having a problem with our server right now.

By the look of things, this is a DNS issue, as some traffic (about a third of the usual levels) seems to be getting through, we certainly can’t see, or edit, the site ourselves.

I am not sure of the reasons for this - it looks like some gremlins have buzzed into our server, but I don’t know if it has anything to do with clock changes.

As soon as I find out anything else, I will post and update. Our blog sites are totally un-affected, as they are hosted elsewhere.

James

UPDATE: This problem was due to a DNS issue with our hosting company. It was fixed on Sunday afternoon (25th March).

We ran an article on Flightmapping last week about dropping adverts for Flybe, because they has asked for all affiliate marketing activity to be suspended. The reason for this was quite clearly stated - they were approaching the financial year end, and the budget had reached its limit.

Then they told us that it was all a mis-understanding, they just wanted affiliates (sites like ourselves) to cool things down a bit, and actually we could carry on advertising them, but could we just tone down any suggestion about them being short of cash?

We made a few small changes to the story, but they then wanted us to go further, explaining exactly how we’d made this mis-understanding, and adding some general comment about what a nice airline they were.

Unfortunately, we just can’t do that, and our commercial arrangements with them are suspended by mutual disagreement, with immediate effect.

For further details about this (from the perspective of the affiliate industry), please see my personal blog post on the subject.