(This time; Online Travel News - xReminder and SlangMail)
On May 3rd 1999 I wrote an article named "The Death of a Travel Agent" - saying that many travel agents would go bankrupt if they was unable to adjust to the new habits of travelers. A month later Mike Hogan wrote a travel article in ZDNet where he quoted Krista Pappas from Gomez Advisors saying "A lot of offline travel agents are feeling very uptight right now." Mike Hogan's Travel article is important not only because I said it first (he, he...) but because of the updated facts given. So even if Internet sales are "only" 10% of today's total travel bookings - this still means that 1 out of 10 travelers have already stopped to using his or her normal offline travel agent. Sometimes numbers speak for themselves - this is one of those times.
Much is bound to happen in a very short time - and I will try to keep you all updated via my articles. In the meantime let us learn to use the new online travel tools available. The best of those tools that is - as you should not go out in the woods hoping to become a lumberjack equipped only with a kitchen knife and a dream.
Why is it important to at least have an axe and not a kitchen knife?
Fact is that trees can be big - travel is the largest business world-wide and online travel accounts for 1/4th of total Internet purchases. For me this is the second time in this article that numbers speak for themselves...
My goal is not only to let you know what is already "commonly known" - because as an old media shark I will always try to be first out with the best ((-:
xREMINDER
Do you remember the last program I mentioned in my last article - if not you will maybe need to be "xReminded" with xReminder.
There has been quite a lot of emails going back and forth between Vladimir Kulemin who made xReminder and myself. Included in our talk has been a proposal to make a FREE version of xReminder. Last news is now that both xReminder Light (the freeware version) and xReminder Pro are up on PIMplus new web site. So you are among the first to be able to get xReminder Light! Don't even think that this freeware version is crippled in any way; it's fully functional and I used xReminder Light in the first beta version as my only reminder tool for several weeks. It's a perfect program and the price is unbeatable. You will find more about xReminder in the end of my previous article.
