Welcome to the December edition of Mandy’s online diary, your insight into what is going on in the world of Bales! |
Mandy Nickerson (nee Bales)
Managing Director |
December- Diary Entry 1
So as I have been talking so much about Women - to continue the theme I had a meeting and lunch with our Bank Manager - who is female. I have been known to be sceptical about bankers (sorry to all you bankers) in the past as I have felt it is different to run a commercial company to that of giving advice to commercial companies when never having worked in a commerce as such. However, my view is now different, and whether it is because banks are more pro-active with their relationships than they used to be or just that my own personal involvement with the bank has increased so much more in the past five years or so, I don’t know. I would say that I have many points I wanted to discuss with our bank manager and she has been so responsive and supportive and offering to really provide some valuable assistance and feedback with things I would not have thought were the banks remit.
December- Diary Entry 2
In our pursuit to stay on the road with the media – I had a coffee catch up with the travel editor of Waitrose magazine. Yes, if you didn’t know before, they do not just talk about food and do have a section on travel. Look out for the March copy – it is going to have an excellent feature linking gourmet with destinations. |
|
December- Diary Entry 3
We can tell its Xmas - attended two christmas lunches in one week. One was the Association of Women Travel Executives and Stella Rimington ex MI5 Boss was the guest speaker. She was fantastic and was inspirational with a huge injection of humour. At this lunch, money was being raised for Refuge, a charity for shelter for women to go to if they are experiencing domestic violence. The figures were staggering. 1 in 4 women are violated. There are more deaths of 18-45 year olds to domestic violence than cancer, road accidents, in fact any other deaths of females within this age group (irrespective of class, race or creed). The speaker on behalf of the refuge made a sobering presentation that clearly had an affect. While there were over 500 people in the room, they raised a staggering £20,000 during the lunch.
December- Diary Entry 4
The second lunch was the Travel Luncheon Club, a gentleman's club, of which Andrew Drakeford, our FD, is a member. He took a private table of friends and I was privileged to be invited. A great lunch with another fantastic speaker, come comedian, come magician. Guess the diet will have to start tomorrow, the next day or next week or even next month... |
|
December - Diary Entry 5
In the last week many of us have been locked away in the meeting room for a week - well, certainly Iain Fenton, our Sales and Marketing Director, Mark Bennetts, our Planning Manager and myself. the reason why was to discuss ideas of destinations and itineraries and product for 2008. We were joined by the Product Manager of each region, plus staff from Sales and Operations if they were familiar with the regions being discussed and felt they could contribute ideas. The process is that we create a word file for everyone to add ideas to and then we discuss this list and further ideas at the meeting. I must say you have been deeply impressed with the many ideas that have been put forward both before the meetings and with the contributions at the meetings. The extensive knowledge that so many staff have of destinations astounds me - and this is not just the countries we currently operate to, but the new areas we are considering. (Don't let staff know that I am so impressed though, otherwise they will all be looking for a pay increase).
December - Diary Entry 6
Historically before Christmas the new bookings are not buoyant. I guess many people are focusing on Christmas. However, this year we have not seen this lull, and have seen a busy month to date. So thanks to all of you that have booked. perhaps it is a Christmas present for your spouse or partner? Whatever the reason, I do appreciate it very much and to see our business booming is the best Christmas present I could ask for. |
|
December - Diary Entry 7
Many of you will know that we have an emergency phone and provide the number to you shortly before you are due to travel. This is of course a 24 hour service and is rota'd between Directors and Managers plus volunteer staff that are prepared to offer that extra commitment to ease the rota for all of us. From having it 365 days a year I now have it 6 weeks a year, another example of so many staff in our company that want to live by our mission - 'passion for customer care'. It is such an excellent service that I know that some of competitors do not offer, personally I think it offers peace of mind to you the traveller and whilst we hope that you do not need to use it, you know we will do our utmost to solve any issues you have should you need to call.
December- Diary Entry 8
I have the phone this Christmas, so whilst we were invited to one of my sister's who lives in Herefordshire, we are staying at home as I do feel I want to be near the office when I have the phone, just in case I need to go into the office. Whilst technology is a great enabler there would be some situations that required not only the member of staff who takes the emergency to deal with it from home but to get a team together in the office. That of course depends on the scale of the issue. Of course it was very necessary just two years ago when the Tsunami in Asia happened and again while I wasn't the Director taking the phone, I needed to be involved but was in Norfolk and Chris Grime, our Operations Manager came to assist the Director in charge in the office on Boxing day and said I could support on the phone from Norfolk. Since that time we have a crisis support team and whenever there is a holiday, we ask for volunteers to come on our crisis support team, meaning that at any time they could be called to come into the office. There is never a shortage of volunteers. |
|
December - Diary Entry 9
This week is our Christmas party and I would love to share with you some of the pleasant surprises that we are going to do on the night, but I daren't, just in case a member of staff should read this blog, as it would take away the element of surprise.
You could start thinking that I 'show-off' a lot about our staff and you would probably be right, I do, and that is simply because I believe we have the most enviable team of people there are in the travel industry and I am proud and honoured to work with them. They know that I feel this as I think it is important to recognise quality and commitment.
It remains for me to wish you all a Happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year. I hope that you will not need to call me on the emergency phone over the festive period but if you do you can be assured that I will endeavour to do all I can to assist.
Over and out...
December - Diary Entry 10
What a week leading up to Christmas for so many millions travelling by air (not all travelling with Bales I hasten to add). The fog that was a real ‘peasouper’ hit so much of the country on Wednesday 20th December and continued for three to four days and disrupted so many people’s holidays. I am sure many gave up and went home. I am delighted to say that no Bales Worldwide clients gave up. I thank all our clients for persevering but also believe that they didn’t give up because of the way we dealt with it. Well I would say that wouldn’t I? Perhaps clients that travelled and may read this can comment on why they did persevere. .
For people that could not get to Heathrow by air with BA we either re-booked on Easy Jet or offered to pay car parking and petrol expenses for those prepared to attempt to do the journey by car. Apart from domestic flights – none of the flights our clients were travelling on were cancelled – though several had serious flight delays. I have to comment on Egyptair who did actually provide hotel accommodation and meals, some airlines simply did not facilitate this, leaving distraught clients to even sleep at the airport on floors and chairs. We have a saying at Bales called ‘one plus’. This means if a traveller has experienced some kind of discomfort or unexpected difficulty we try everything we can do to give them a real lift by a gesture. Though, I believe everyone would not hold us responsible for the weather and the delays that went with this, we were mindful of the fact that for some people they lost up to two days of their holiday. So what kind of 'one plus' did we do at our cost? We offered to try and extend holidays the other end if there was flight availability and accommodation and we were able to provide this to some. Some unfortunately, we were simply not able to get flights on new dates as it moved nearer to the New Year when flights are so booked for several days. We offered complimentary excursions where we could and complimentary drinks with their Christmas or New Year's dinner. We have been able to offer some clients a complimentary balloon ride – all sorts of things really. What do I think we did best? I think where possible we kept in touch with the clients as and when we had update news for them. I always say information buys patience and I think that is true. We did not call the clients when we had no news as that in itself is very frustrating to continually receive case just to report a non-event, but we kept as informed as we could and with our contacts, and here I have to particularly recommend Liz who runs Reps UK. Many of you will have met Liz or one of her team at the airport, as they see off all our group departures from London if there is not a UK escort. Liz used to work for an airline and has more contacts than anyone else I know. Over the time we have worked with Liz, she has been consistently fantastic – cannot promise she can do this every time – but she has been able to check someone in with an airline with a flight departing in 20 minutes, she has managed to board passengers without possession of their air tickets and she is the calm in any storm (excuse the pun about the weather) but she took calls from us from early morning through to late evening doing her ‘Jim’ll Fix It’ routine and getting information that we could not.. and nor could our clients get access to. So publically I say thank you to Liz so much – how did we ever manage without you?
December - Diary Entry 11
So I have said previously that I had the emergency phone over Christmas and for the best reasons in the world I hoped that if you were travelling with us over the Christmas period , that I wouldn’t speak to you during this time. As it is I spoke to quite a lot of you and want to thank you so so much for your patience and support and recognition that we did as much as we could and hopefully that you felt we went beyond our duties of customer care with our ‘one pluses’
December - Diary Entry 12
I hand over the phone to Andrew Drakeford, our Financial Director tomorrow who is kindly taking it for New Year and as with all our Directors, Managers and Staff who take the phone you can be assured of excellent service and that the Duty Manager on the phone will always do their utmost to help you.
December - Diary Entry 13
This week, between Christmas and New Year, when so many people are off work is another unpredictable week for sales, but the travel industry has had so much media coverage over Christmas (with much of it positive), that I think it has alerted many into booking and of course I am delighted to see that bookings are better than I anticipated.
December - Diary Entry 14
If you haven’t yet travelled with us – I hope that within this blog I display enough reasons for you to seriously consider finding out the difference of travelling with Bales – if you have or are going to in 2007 I give you my word that we will do all we can to exceed your expectations.
It is not a great advert for Bales – but I am off to Norwich for New Year with my family and my brother in law and his family. So looking forward to it... but of course I would rather be winging my way to one of the many destinations we feature, but not really worth it for a two night break and my Chairman won’t give me more time off!!!!
Hope you all enjoy the New Year and that 2007 is healthy and happy and travelling continues to be a pleasure for all of you. |
