Today is the seventh birthday of this blog. A word of appreciation is in order for all our readers, especially those who leave their thoughtful comments. Special thanks are also due to our advertisers, who help defray our expenses in renting and maintaining the server on which this blog resides. It’s been quite a ride, and we look forward to keeping our pedal to the metal.
Written by Travel News on July 6th, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on News.
This is the content of the ad2.php file. Leave it blank or include your ad.
The folks who want to put a recall of Portland’s creepy mayor on the ballot say they’ll be filing their paperwork bright and early tomorrow morning, and they’ll start collecting petition signatures immediately thereafter. From a press release that we just received:
As soon as the City Auditor approves the recall petition the campaign will hold a series of training sessions to educate volunteers how to legally and ethically collect their goal of 50,000 signatures in a 90 day window from active registered Portland voters. The campaign currently has over 600 volunteers and $2778.37 in donations….
Local attorney Erin Fitzgerald, of Fitzgerald Law (www.legalfitz.com), is personally volunteering her time and talent to lead the recall’s legal team, who ensures that the campaign is in compliance with Oregon election and volunteer signature circulator laws. Local progressive political consulting firm Forward Support (www.forwardsupport.com) has been retained by the recall campaign to provide contribution and expenditure services. Jasun Wurster is a founding partner and partial owner of Forward Support. The recall has signed a contract with Astro Data Services (www.voterlist.com) from Corvallis, Oregon to provide voter lists and web based voter identification software.
If they can get this done, it will be one of the greatest grassroots stories in the history of the Rose City. We’ll be signing the petition — will you?
Written by Travel News on July 6th, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on News.
This is the content of the ad3.php file. Leave it blank or include your ad.
Gay Talese takes a boat ride.
Written by Travel News on July 6th, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on News.
It’s interesting to see who gets bitten by the blogging bug. Erstwhile Portlander Janna Orkney, daughter of the founder of G.I. Joe’s, blogged about that experience for a while. Now she’s tackling public affairs on her home turf of East Ventura County, California with a newish blog called Conejo Post. As a member of the water and sanitation board down that way, she’s also having an impact as a formal policymaker as well as a blogger.
Orkney dropped us a nice note today to say that our blog was part of the inspiration for her own. (She notes, however, that her “tone is gentler” than ours — probably a smart move.) It’s been a while since we had a “blogchild,” and it is a good feeling. Good luck to her with her various public-spirited projects.
Written by Travel News on July 6th, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on News.
Here’s an interesting history project — ferreting out American places in which important things took place, but which bear no memorial of those events. There are probably more than a handful of these in Portland and vicinity. As just one example, what’s now in the spot where “Louie Louie” was recorded by the Kingsmen?
Written by Travel News on July 6th, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on News.
When we wrote about the new Oregon law forbidding handheld cell phone use while driving, we got an e-mail from this company touting its product. It isn’t even in beta release yet, but already they’re marketing.
If this is eventually a successful venture, we can imagine many potential offshoots. “He’s on the john right now — don’t bother him.” “Would you like me to auto-Tweet for you during the bar exam?” “Click here and we’ll explain to your callers that you’ve passed out at a party.”
Written by Travel News on July 6th, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on News.
For new bookings arriving in September, all guests staying at LaSource will automatically receive the following:
- Couples Massage
- Bottle of Champagne on arrival
- Single Travellers – One Extra spa treatment from the A La Carte Menu
- Room Upgrade – Subject to availability.
So hurry, book your next holiday to LaSource, Grenada now!!!! ……………
Post from: Luxury Holiday Blog – Tropical Sky
Related posts:
- What makes Grenada’s LaSource a real all-inclusive?
- Exclusive – Monarch Airlines to launch new charter flight to Grenada and Tobago
- Loving life at Grenada’s LaSource
Written by Travel News on July 6th, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on News.
The race is on amongst budget carriers – a race to the bottom, to see who can inconvinience passengers the most, in return for shaving off a few more bucks off the ticket price.
Budget Airlines – JetAmerica, RyanAir & Spring Airlines
JetAmerica, which started taking bookings for $9 flights with much fanfare in late May, was supposed to launch on July 13. They’ve now postponed the launch to Aug 14. The reason for the delay is a lack of landing and take-off time slots at Newark.
JetAmerica’s VP of Operations Brian Burling says that the FAA flip-flopped on the need for time slots. He says they initially indicated JetAmerica wouldn’t need slots, but after the FAA found that JetAmerica had sold over 20,000 tickets even before the first flight had taken off, they changed their stance and now JetAmerica is grounded until they get the slots.
Of course, this leaves the 6,486 JetAmerica passengers who had booked tickets for dates in-between July 13 and Aug 14 in the lurch. JetAmerica is now refunding all of them, and offering to waive reservation charges if they re-book. This is what happens when you book cheap airline tickets with an airline which has no planes or crew and exists only on paper.
In Europe, cheapskate carrier RyanAir wants to leave no doubt that they’ll do anything to keep the prices down – even if it means leaving customers without a way to check-in. Last month, RyanAir announced a 10 hour downtime for their website, citing a need for essential maintenance.
RyanAir is also phasing out airport check-in desks as part of it’s cost-cutting measures, which basically means passengers can only check-in online. Which, of course, they can’t do if the website is down. This kind of catch-22 situation wouldn’t happen if the airline in question wasn’t going wild trying to save a few more dollars in any way possible.
But China’s first private airline and budget carrier Spring Airlines aims to go where no airline has gone before – They’re planning to get modified planes from Airbus with bar stools and safety belts, instead of seats. The plan is to offer standing-room tickets, and cram in 40% more passengers per flight.
Spring Airlines currently has 13 planes, and they’re not able to cope with the surging passenger volumes and demand for new routes. They’ve ordered 14 new jets, and if they get approval from the aviation regulator, the bar-stool planes could cut the airline’s costs by 20%, and allow them to offer lower prices to passengers.
How low can budget carriers go before consumers start weighing the merits of cheap tickets against inconviniences like cancelled flights, check-in problems and standing-room only flights? Apparently a lot more, judging by the 20k tickets sold by JetAmerica, and the 60 million passengers who flew on RyanAir in the 12 months to the end of June.
Assuming cheap carriers will always find customers, regardless of how bad the service is, should aviation authorities step in and draw a line somewhere?
Photo credits:- JetAmerica photo courtesy JetAmerica; Ryanair interior photo by Jon Gos via flickr (creative commons); Spring Airlines photo released into public domain by Follash.
Written by Travel News on July 6th, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on Tips and Tricks.
Just last week we were talking here on the BOOT about the Japanese online travel market. Then over the weekend TechCrunch published a very detailed and interesting profile of Rakuten called “Japan’s Rakuten: Can The Biggest E-Commerce Site You Never Heard Of Become a Threat for Amazon Globally?“. The post discusses Rakuten’s full ecommerce spectrum and (as per the title) their challenge to Amazon. We here in BOOT land have spoken often about how Rakuten Travel is probably biggest online travel player in Asia and one of the biggest in the world. Online travel sales for Rakuten are in the $2billion range, beating out Ctrip, Wotif, AsiaRooms or any of the Asian interations of the big four Expedia (including eLong), Travelocity (including Zuji), Priceline (including Agoda) and Orbitz (including HotelClub).
Written by Travel News on July 6th, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on Tips and Tricks.
Dear Readers,
Finally the BOOT has gotten off the lazy boy relaxation approach to marketing with a ground breaking URL marketing strategy. After battling with GoDaddy for about an hour I managed to secure http://www.thebusinessofonlinetravel.com/. I even manage to figure out how to do a redirect to the blogger address. One day I may even generate the courage to migrate the blog to Wordpress/SquareSpace, host the thing on some dedicated servers and get really serious.
Will be back soon with some posts as well including an Interview with Ram Badrinathan of PhoCusWright, seat reviews for JAL and Cathay business class, a business traveller tip on how to eat on a plane and industry thoughts on branding, meta-search and more
best
Tim
Written by Travel News on July 6th, 2009 with no comments.
Read more articles on Tips and Tricks.
« Older articles
No newer articles
This is the content of the ad4.php file. Leave it blank or include your ad.
