Marketing Begins At Home

Tired Eurostar

Its been a while since I travelled on Eurostar, but yesterday I went to Paris and back. For the first time, I travelled business class at a premium price that was the equivalent of an airfare to Paris from BA.

The staff and service were great. They looked after everyone well, spoke both French and English to a very high standard. The trains departed and arrived on time. This was the first time that I had been on the"new" track on the english side, and arriving at St Pancras. It made a huge difference to the clanky nasty old rails that used to carry Eurostar to Waterloo.

The bad news is that Eurostar really needs to do some urgent refurbishment. Toilets were dirty and doors wouldn't stay shut. One loo on each train was out of order in the section I was in. The business carriages were extremely tired. Dirty carpets, dirty seats, leather arms on the chairs in very poor repair, colours looking extremely dated.

I feel sorry for the staff - they do their best to uphold the brand promise. But they are let down by the infrastructure, and that's a fixable management issue, given that Eurostar traffic seems to be holding up well by my unscientific count of the number of people waiting to travel yesterday. Maybe the management is as tired as the trains. Maybe the people who run the operational timetable at Eurostar should get a job at BAA, and perhaps the BA people who keep the interiors of their airlines could do a lot for Eurostar.

Do travel agents have a future?

Recently I have been planning a holiday in Australia. Fairly complex, lots of options, but tons of opportunity for a travel agent to show that they really know their stuff. What we wanted to do was visit friends in Sydney and Gold Coast, do some liveaboard diving on the great barrier reef, and then see whatever else fitted in with the trip.

One Oz specialist kept trying to put us in places with a 3 day or a 5 day minimum which we didn't want. Another UK long haul agent did a reasonable job on flights but insisted on using Quantas so missed out on better deals from Singapore. They really blew it when they told me inaccurately that the dive boat we wanted was full - I later ordered it online. Presumably they got a better commission from the other boat they offered instead. Instead of selling the positives of the new offer, they tried to tell me that my choice wasn't available. Silly people.

So I ordered the trip online a la carte from a bunch of suppliers. Am I better off? Well, as my partner says, planning the trip is a big part of the thrill. So I guess I am pretty thrilled already. Would I have liked to find a travel agent who would have done the legwork and earned a commission. Yes, but I didn't find one who earned it. What this tells me is that to survive in the travel business today, you had better be very clear what your value is, and make sure you sell it hard to every prospect. I never got a clear message from either travel agent about why they were better than what I could do online myself.

Electronic walking around?

It's Proms season in London right now. One of the concerts I went to was a world music celebration. The last act was from Mali - Bassekou Kouyate and his band. They played a range of music from 17th century traditional to more recent works. What was fascinating to me was to see the thread that connects this music to US black southern music to jazz. The connections were really clear.

Bassekou had wireless mikes on most of the instruments so they could move around on the stage and dance. As the leader he spent a huge amount of the set walking around, looking at and connecting with the other musicians individually. He was definitely in charge and making sure that everyone was connected. My wife leaned across - "management by walking around" - was her comment and it was really true.

As we move away from meetings and offices and more into the electronic, home working, remote office scenarios, I wonder how we create the electronic equivalent of management by walking around? I have been spending more time away from my office location recently and haven't found a really good way yet to replace the eyeball contact with co-workers. IM, phones, netmeetings, email, video conferences, all have their own place. But I haven't found a better way to keep the team focused and positive than physically walking around. Any one else got any better ideas?