Don't like this travel company? Then find a blog and post your thoughts!

I don't get many comments on this blog, and some I reject (not publish) because they are not relevant, but even though the numbers are small, a couple of comments submitted in the past few days have highlighted a clear trend - the way social media is used as a platform by disaffected consumers.

The two key points are:

• The majority of comments submitted to this blog are a subjective complaint about bad practise by a company or organisation mentioned in the post.
  
  
• All of those are made in response to a post which paints the company in a favourable or neutral light.

IE. If I pour scorn on British Airways, nobody adds their 'two-penny-worth'. If I mention Raphaels Bank, Qatar Airways or Nortours in a favourable light, readers queue up to denounce them.

It's easy to understand why, and easy to do. Until now individual consumers have had little or no voice for their complaints. Now suddenly they do. If you feel you've been ripped off, wouldn't you want to shout as loud as you can? All you have to do is use a search engine to hunt for your target's name in blogs and forums, and post your complaint.

PR man, Neil McLean, is often warning companies to be aware of their online image in the new world of Web 2.0. I guess this is one of the reasons why.

Bradt Travel Guide to Iraq - unexplained

How frustrating! I was sitting in my car listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning feeling very sorry for the peeps at Bradt Travelguides as a rare opportunity for good publicity on primetime national radio was flushed down the toilet.

Bradt have just updated their guide to Iraq, which they first published in 2002, a few months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It was a bad interview (at 8.51am if you want to listen to it) that never got off the ground. Sarah Montague never moved on from her first and pretty much only question: variations on: "is it a guide for tourists?". The author, Karen Dabrowska, just got hopelessly bogged down in a dour academic explanation of the subject matter.

So the audience never really got a feel for the fact that this was a timely book from a publisher that has a reputation for covering off-the-beaten-track destinations, and that it was never intended to be a practical tourist guide, more a sort of stocktaking inventory of what lay in the cradle of civilisation between the Tigris and the Euphrates....before the Americans started bombing it.

Nor was it explained that far from being a failure in terms of sales - something you might expect for a guidebook aimed at non-existant tourists - it sold very well, and there is anecdotal evidence that many copies were taken to Iraq in the hands of military personel, security services and NGOs. (A case of: "Wait a minute gunner. Before we put a tank round into that minaret, let me just check the Bradt guide to see if it is a historic monument!")

The publication of the 1st edition triggered a certain amount of respect and admiration from the travel and publishing trades for Hilary Bradt and her team. Sadly Karen Dabrowska's interview made them look ridiculous.

More national disgrace

Under our consitution, members of my professional association can be thrown out if by their behaviour they 'bring it into disrepute'.

Anybody who thinks that British Airways, BAA and T5 haven't done that - brought our country and transport system into disrepute - should read Roger Collis' article in Sunday's edition of the New York Times. Collis is a longstanding and highly regarded business travel correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, as well known to Americans as Simon Calder is here. His article, entitled Heathrow Terminal 5: How to avoid it gives fellow Americans practical advice on how to travel to the UK without going through T5.

It begins...

It is hard to imagine that the airport experience, especially at London's dreaded Heathrow, could get any worse. But the opening of Terminal 5 on March 27 was a fiasco of epic proportions. British Airways, sole occupiers of the "state-of-the-art" terminal, canceled hundreds of flights; some 20,000 bags were parted from their owners — many are still lost

Nuff said.

Only 1 in 5 holidaymakers use travel agents?

"Booking a holiday over the internet has become so popular that only one in five people use a travel agent, according to a new survey"

...says the Telegraph

That can't be right!

At least I really hope it isn't, because I have been vigorously arguing for years that the Internet is excellent for buying simple travel products (short breaks for 2, city pair flights) but for anything more complex you should use the Internet for research then pick up the phone and book with a real person at a travel agency or tour operator.

Aaaah! Wait a minute...

Who is Ciao Surveys?

An online shopping community. It turns out they operate a paid survey system. People signed up with them get paid (£1-£5) to fill out online surveys. So hardly a well-balanced random survey sample of the British public. These are people who are almost certainly wedded to their computers and probably buy everything online.

Phew!

Boeing / Airbus love fest

Here's a piece of trade news I hadn't expected.

There's been more bad blood between the aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus than there ever was between the Montagues & the Capulets, the Lancastrians & the Yorkists, or, on a more contemporary footing, Ken Livingstone and the Evening Standard!

So what a surprise to read that:

Boeing and Airbus have signed an agreement to work together to ensure global interoperability in air traffic management as part of an effort to help reduce the impact of aviation on the environment.

The companies will seek the acceleration of improvements to the world's air transportation management system in order to increase efficiency and eliminate traffic congestion.

Scott Carson, Boeing Commercial Airplanes president and CEO, and Tom Enders, Airbus president and CEO, signed the agreement between the two industry leaders at the sidelines of the third Aviation and Environmental Summit in Geneva.

"Airbus and Boeing are great competitors, and this has been a critical element that has sharpened our focus and efforts toward making aviation more efficient," Carson said. "While our approaches often differ, we are working towards the same goal -- to reduce aviation's environmental impact."

"I am convinced technology and innovation hold the key to reducing aviation's environmental impact and increasing eco-efficiency," Enders said. "And competition is a great motivator for this. Where Boeing and Airbus share a common position on the environment and safety, it is in all our interests that we cooperate to achieve our common goals more quickly."

...feather smashes writer to the ground!