Category: Web 2.0

Happy 2010 – Looking forward to 365 nights in Amsterdam Hotels

Vincent van Dijk DSC9108_lr

Happy 2010, the start of a new decade!

A new web 2.0 social media hotel review project:
Amsterdam counts 350 hotels and Vincent Van Dijk starts his dedicated blog Amsterdam Slaapt (i.e. Amsterdam Sleeps). Each day of 2010 he will tell us about his adventures in one of those 350 hotels, as each day of 2010 he will be sleeping out of his suitcase in one.

As Vincent uses to live and work in The Hague I’m really curious what his experience will be. Especially as my slogan is always: You should party in Amsterdam, but you should sleep in The Hague!

Nevertheless it is an interesting initiative which I will be following closely as he seems to plan to be reporting in Dutch only.

Here is Victor’s first Tweet as @AmsterdamSlaapt

@Amsterdam-Slaapt

“On January 1, 2010 I’ll start start the hotel project Amsterdam Sleeps in

Parkhotel Amsterdam

the stylish Parkhotel Amsterdam.

About Vincent van Dijk
Vincent van Dijk is a food and life style trend watcher and co owner of The Hague (Scheveningen) based ad agency HBMEO. He is a restaurant spotter for the Dutch Restaurant Guide SpecialBite err SpecialBite.com.

Sources in Dutch: Een jaar slapen in A’damse hotels – AT5 Nieuws and Misset Hotel.

How Tunnelvisionaries at Eurostar “Missed the Train” again


Two Eurostar Trains by Austin Evan on Flickr.

Just before I hit the warm sack early this morning it became apparent through Twitter that 4 Eurostar trains had become stuck in the Chunnel, the tunnel under the Channel between Calais in France and Folkestone in the UK.

Earlier this week there had been rumors of British train drivers calling a strike because of failing salary negotiations. I wonder if the two items are connected.

Three trains from France to the United Kingdom were involved and one from the UK to France. At least 2,000 people were stuck in their trains. Moreover after they were hauled out of the Chunnel,  some people even were stuck in a train in Folkestone for another 7 hours making their trip a 15 hr horror journey without being at the destination. The official reading is a failed electricity system because it was cold outside and warm in the tunnel.

A Dutch paper suggested this week that the operators of railroads in the European Alps, the Nordic countries or Canada would laugh their ass off when they would read what the Dutch railroad operators presented as excuses for trains not operating as they should. Now they can add Eurostar as yet another laughingstock.

Tech Crunch has a thoughtful article about it: As hundreds of Eurostar passengers languish, Eurostar ignores Twitter They could have used Twitter, but didn’t think of it.

The main fail is that they didn’t show any compassion for their passengers and also apparently didn’t think about the relatives of passengers who were waiting in the cold at both ends of the journey without being informed in one way or another. No news was provided. Management seemed sound asleep. Same attitude seemed have been the rule in the case of the train that had a truck on board that got on fire in September 2008.

Today all trains to and from the UK were cancelled.

Customer Service, Marketing and PR should have been be married into one voice Marck Pack claims and rightfully so.  Note I chose the same photo by accident before I red his post.

When I travel from the continent to the UK I usually prefer to travel by car an then tend to prefer a ferry above a cartrain through the Chunnel. Only the idea you can swim instead of being burried or chocked in a tunnel does it for me. But I have taken the car train a couple of times because my fellow travelers prefer a train over a ferry because they get easy seasick. What can you do…

I’m a bit focused on the Eurostar because of the ticket incident with the Thalys, the Amsterdam – Brussels leg of the Eurostar that I described last week.

Update
Dan Beck Daniele Becari, a frequent Eurostar traveler commented here: Eurostar PR Fallout

I was reading through @Coletteballou‘s tweets and found the following highly interesting observation:

Colette-Ballou---Claudia-Schiffer-got-out-before-the-masses
Now that is good PR: Apparently Claudia Schiffer got out of the mess before the masses…”Quot licet Iovi…”

Now more incidents showing the same attitude are being mentioned on several places.

Update 2 – Eurotunnel saved Eurostar???
@Railservice, a twitter account maintained by three Swiss Public Transport employees pointed me to the following harnessed Press Release where Eurotunnel claimed it had saved Eurostar:

Eurotunnel rescues Eurostar
Overnight from Friday 18 to Saturday 19 December Eurotunnel staff went to the assistance
of 5 Eurostar trains which had broken down in the Channel Tunnel, following technical
failures. These incidents were in no way due to the Tunnel infrastructure.
Eurotunnel staff:

  • Rescued 5 Eurostar trains which had lost traction
  • Evacuated 1,364 Eurostar passengers and brought them to the surface in Folkestone, Kent, using their own trains, where they were able to continue their journey to London
  • Towed 2 Eurostars to St Pancras as Eurostar did not have the means to do so themselves*

Pascal Sainson, Eurotunnel Operations Director, commented: “In very difficult conditions Eurotunnel made the decision to assist the Eurostar trains and their passengers. In order to conduct these operations in complete safety, Eurotunnel mobilised substantial extra staff and technical resources and also made the decision to interrupt its own services. Eurotunnel has done everything it can to resolve the situation”.
Traffic in the Channel Tunnel has been progressively returning to normal since 05:40 CET this morning.
In anticipation of heavy traffic this weekend Eurotunnel had already instigated its BAR Programme (Busy And Ready). In particular a fleet of snow ploughs and road clearing vehicles has been operating to clear snow from the terminal in Coquelles, France to reduce
the impact of the current severe weather in northern France.
Eurotunnel is however not responsible for the condition of the motorways.
Eurotunnel has put in place an organisation to help passengers to cross the Channel even if they arrive late at the departure terminal.
* Eurotunnel locomotives and Shuttles are prepared and maintained so that they are not affected by rapid temperature changes.

This at least teaches me that the car shuttles and the Eurostar trains are operated by two separate companies that I wasn’t aware of.

The final quote is the statement that has been haunting me all day today and yesterday: From own experience that the Swiss operate trains that enter tunnels that have extreme temperature differences with the outside. Frequently I have used use the Lötschberg car shuttle between Kandersteg and Goppenstein when traveling to the Rhone valley in Switserland. There It can be minus 10 or minus 20 Celsius outside, while the tunnel temperature is plus 14 to plus 16 degrees Celcius. In addition passenger trains from Bern to Milan used to use the same tunnel without these kind of things happening. I take it there is no difference since the passenger trains are now using the new Lötschberg Basis Tunnel as of 2007. Moreover they have many other tunnels with the same phenomenon…So I have a serious question about the Eurostar trains failing under these circumstances.

Moreover. When I find the quotes regarding prior incidents with poor communication again I’ll repeat them here.

Last edited by Happy Hotelier on December 21, 2009 at 12:20 am

Self Portrait Chair by Ka-Lai (Dutch Design 49)

selfportrait Chair by Ka Lai
Ka Lai is a designer who just graduated from the Dutch design school in Utrecht:

Based on the personal emotions and sentiments that the designer, Ka-Lai Chan, has experienced. The chair is an expression of the growth of her own personality and character over the past years. With partly organic forms and using a classic black and white leather skin, it brings together contemporary and modern elements.

“In the past I have always found myself to be quite introverted. Often, perhaps due to my social background, I could not let my emotions surface – I didn’t dare show my feelings to other people. It felt like there was something growing inside me which was getting bigger and bigger. I always tended to hide away my personality, but my deepest wish was to be able to open up and just be myself. In part, I see my chair is an expression of this process”

Via Ka Lai

Testing Clipmarks [Disappeared February 2012]

clipmarks Logo

Just testing a new application:

My main dilemma is I am a two finger typist only and I have a strong desire to share my finds from all over the internet.

I tend to believe my finds are also of interest to my readers.

A decent way of doing this is manually copying and pasting information into a WP post, edit it and then add the url to the original information location. That, however is very time consuming. Even editing a Carnival post takes a lot of time. I simply lack the time to do it that proper!

On the other hand I don’t want to become a “scraper”, someone who simply imports via an RSS import plugin without any original thought or pointer.

Thus far I have tried several approaches, like:

  • Sharing reads in my Google reader and putting a Google reader widget here in the side column. Recently I found out through a nifty Firefox Plugin, called firebug, that all widgets take waaay too much time to load. Hence I kicked all widgets from my side box including the Google one. Then I tried to import shares from my Google reader in a separate page…didn’t get it working.
  • Earlier, for some time I believed Tumblring (off course there are other services alike Tumblr) was the solution. It even seems possible to Tumblr from your own site, but digging into the necessary code took me too much time and I abandoned the project.
  • I have been using the Quickpress plugin for WordPress. Problem with that is you only can clip and paste one paragraph and can hardly edit it. Moreover Quickpress copies the original title of a post…mostly I don’t want to copy the title at all, because it doesn’t fit in this blog. Finally you always ought to make clear that you clipped something from someone else. Time permitting I solved it by adding b-quotes around somebody elses text.
  • The Press it plugin which is part of the WordPress suite does some things similar to Quickpress. At least you can save the clip as a draft post and then attack it from the WordPress editor. However, with my lateral approach of everything including blogging, I use to have a constant flow of about 80-100 draft posts lying around here withaout the attention they deserve. Once and for all I want to get rid of them.
  • Another approach could be using Stumble to it’s full extent: First stumble, later when you have time look back to what you stumbled and maie it into a decent post…However I am unable to fully grasp it and use it to it’s full possibilities.
  • Posting stuff as WIP (work in process) with the intention to later edit and augment it, like I am doing with this post. Actually no way to go at all, because before I edit it again something new comes up every time.
  • Then I discovered Amplify and experimented with it for a couple of weeks. I like the way you can order and edit your clips, the header and the way you can add your own thoughts. I simply put up the question if I could use it on my own blog and then one of the Amplify guys directed me to Clipmarks

Why I believe Clipmarks might work for me:

  1. You can create your own header
  2. While clipping you can very precisely choose the order of your clippings. What you clip first comes first. Usually I want to show a photo or picture first and give comments thereafter.
  3. The whole clip is clearly visible as a clip. You don’t put your reader on the wrong foot presenting something as your own product.
  4. If I want to add more obeservations to a clip I can leave the clip as it is and simply add more stuff…the clip remains as it is, a clip

Let’s see how it works.

Update March 6, 2012

Recently Clipmarks and Amplify have ceased operating. Even without an advance notice. Snap bang closed! Actually What I’ve feared from the outset. The original demo I featured here in this post is still left as a leftover on the internet. I’ve pushed it to the end of the post until it will disappear as well.

Last edited by GJE on March 13, 2012 at 4:14 pm and added to my Internet Graveyard Category

Travel Counsellors – The Future of Travel Agents: Working From Home!

Travel-Counsellors-Logo

Coincidentally I got into contact with Bianca Maoua of the Dutch Branch of Travel Counsellors. A thriving franchise that is branching out despite the travel agent walk or kick out all over the world.

It was a very nice first encounter and I do believe this is the future alternative for the High Street Travel Agent.

Off course I’m biased, because I’m so used to the home working travel agent already: In my former life I worked 24/7 and had to change travel itineraries the very last moment (usually between 10 PM and 2.30AM). We then used a lady whose name I’ve forgotten sadly, but who was located in LA and worked there from home and from an office and helped us with airline leg scheduling and Hotel reservations when all Travel Agents here in The Netherlands were closed. This was in the late 80ies and early 90ies, way before Internet, but she had acces to GDS and could work with it and, more importantly knew how to trick the system…the now not permitted reverse your leg trip and so. Later I used a guy wo could tweak the same GDS with … just an embryonal PC…

About Travel Counsellors

Founded : 1994 by Chairman David Speakman

200 staff are located at the company’s Headquarters in the UK headquarters in Bolton. 40 more in overseas offices.

Over 1,000 home based self employed agents, located throughout the UK along with Ireland, the Netherlands, the US, Germany, South Africa and Australia. Further overseas expansion is planned. 83% of the agents are women, 77% have children, 71% are aged between 31 and 50 with an average of 19 years experience. Before joining Travel Counsellors 60% were either managers, deputy mangers or owners of high street / retail travel agencies

The company’s turnover has increased from its 1993 level of £510,000 to £245m for the financial year ending October 31 2008.

What they sell:
Packages represent 20% of total sales, including traditional package holidays from the (UK) big four. Tailor made holidays are about two thirds (65%) of our business, booked either with specialist tour operators or dynamically packaged using our own award winning Phenix system. The remaining 15% consists of cruise and business travel bookings.

Impressive! Even if you are net savvy they can save you tremendous time! They claim their Phenix system makes them better informed than any customer shopping on the internet….

I do permit myself a comment: Their site needs loads of more content! Syndication perhaps?

And a question: Are there genuine travel agent review sites out there?