Some of Alan's views on this digital marketing malarkey ... there's more on: AlanCharlesworth.com

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

It's the thought that counts

OK, so the value is negligable, but at least they made the effort. It was also a day early, but let's not get too picky :-)


But Google did get the right day ...

Sunday, November 15, 2015

It's all Dutch to me

On my way back from Romania [see previous post]  I found myself - oh joy of joys - in Schiphol airport for 6 hours. Now, as airports go, it is as good as any [I've been there more times than I care to remember] - and like many places, it now offers free wifi [well, an hour free, after that you pay].

Naturally, you have to register - but the form was only available in Dutch. So when I couldn't make it work, I couldn't find out why.

eBay: just because I'm in Romania ...

... doesn't mean I can suddenly speak Romanian. As seen in a email to me while I was out of the UK.

There's got to be a way round this hasn't there? oh, and by the way eBay - Romania might be in the EU ... but they do not use the Euro.

As a footnote: Romanians will readily admit that their country is being slow in moving from the Communist era and there are many things that could be better. However - in my experience of four cities in the country - their WIFI knocks spots off that in many countries. And in three of the four hotels I stayed in no password was needed to access the WIFI ... it was just there when you wanted it.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Burying their heads in the sand?

After the tragic loss of life when a Russian airliner crashed in the Sinai desert, last night the UK government suspended all UK flights to or from Sharm el-Sheikh airport.

The story was of interest to me because I’m supposed to be going to Sharm next month – so I took a look at the websites of the three main UK tour operators for holidays in Egypt.


OK, so they may be using social media as their primary platform for communication on the issue, but not everyone uses the likes of Facebook and Twitter – so I would have expected better than this …

The first is from market leader, Thomson Holidays. Look carefully and you will see a link. Would you have seen it if I hadn't put a green ring around it? I didn't.


At least Thomas Cook have made the effort to but a bespoke header, but it still hardly shouts at you ... 

But worst is the company who actually specialise in holidays to Egypt. No matter how hard you look you won't see any mention of the flight ban because their is none - despite the fact that they must have customers 'stranded' in Sharm and many others due to fly out this week. 


UPDATE Nov 8th

Well, at least RedSea have got round to mentioning the problem - but it's not shouting off the page either. And the phones being out-of-order seems a little 'convenient'.