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Welcome to the February edition of Bales Online Diary, your insight into what is going on in the world of Bales!

Mandy Nickerson (nee Bales)

February- Diary Entry 1

It does seem that our country comes to more of a standstill than some other countries when we have slightly adverse weather conditions. I am sure many millions of people attempted to get to work when we had the snow but I feel equally sure that others, when they saw there was snow, didn’t even attempt the journey. With modern technology it enables far more freedom of working from home and so, if planned, you can ensure that everyone can still be productive even in adverse weather conditions. That being said, the vast majority of our staff came in and made an attempt to leave earlier as they knew traffic going home would be slow. Here again is an example of the commitment from our staff to keep up our level of service to you.

We had a ground handler (oops, sorry to slip into jargon – the ground handlers are our appointed overseas agents who take care of you once you arrive at your chosen destination). Anyway, one of our appointed agents was going to be in transit at Heathrow for two or three hours and I thought it was important to try and get to meet with him. I am very mindful of the welcome our agents extend to our clients and want to reciprocate by at least showing that we will make the same effort with them. It is all too easy to accept invitations when we are overseas and then not have the time to meet with our partners when they visit this country. It goes against my morals – treat as you want to be treated in every walk of life and I believe it pays off in the end. That apart, it is with some enthusiasm that I go to meet our partners – being a people’s person I love the face to face contact and it only goes to further strengthen the relationships we have (I hope!). We had some interesting things to discuss, new developments and were able to exchange views on how we can make the experience really even more special for you etc., and I believe that we may have come up with something……..to be continued!

I am quite excited about how our 60th birthday year is taking shape. I felt that it was very important to include our customers, if interested. You are of course vitally important in this celebration, as without customers we would not be celebrating. In the mean time I want to tell you about Travelude – as a part of our 60th year celebrations we want to create something very special with images. We want to use 60 sensational images from around the world (doesn’t have to be a Bales destination) and compile a show with a dynamic sound track to accompany it. We invite you to send one of your amazing images in to us. Should your image be selected there are plans afoot to invite you to join us for a special event, where you would also have the opportunity of seeing the presentation. It could be a scene taken as far back as 60 years ago or it could be an image taken only yesterday. It is to create and inspire the prospect of travel over the last 60 years. Please contact me for further information if you are interested (marketing@balesworldwide.com)

Talking of photography, our next Bales World magazine arrives in March and you will see that we are introducing a photo gallery whereby you can showcase some of your own travel photographs on our web site.

Early in the month, I met with one of the most delightful travel journalists who has the art of putting humour into her accounts of the world. I very much hope that she does take us up on our invitation to travel with us and experience the magic that Bales Worldwide offers. She is keen so I will keep you posted as I know many of you will have enjoyed reading her pieces and still do.

Well, probably a very female thing – met with one of our IT providers who we use for our reservation system. Both being female and both having a full day time diary we chose to meet up in the evening. We met at 7.30 and had made a reservation for 8 p.m. So much to talk about, so much to catch up on that we realised at 9.30 we should get to the restaurant. We did so, receiving a warm welcome, had ordered our drinks and I was admiring the ambience of the place and the menu, when my colleague announced that in fact we were in the wrong restaurant. As she had particularly researched to get us a really new and fine dining experience we drank up, politely left the first restaurant and arrived at the one we were due at some two and a half hours late. It was fantastic, an oriental fusion of food and truly one of the best meals I have ever had. Realising that there were no trains – well it was now 1.a.m. I went to get a taxi – but my host insisted that her chauffeur would take me home via her home – that is fine but she lives in Berkshire and I live in Surrey but we still had so much more to talk about so I accepted. Got home after 3a.m. and had to be up and out of the house by 6.30 – well much as I need sleep it does get in the way of life doesn’t it. I think the moral of this story is that whilst I am very capable of looking after clients and other people – leave me to look after myself and I am a disaster!

It was well worth getting up early as I was to attend a breakfast briefing with Willy Walsh (of British Airways) – no not just the two of us - there were around 200 travel industry colleagues in the audience. Willy Walsh has an enormous presence and the charm of the Irish and you could not help by being amazed by him. Well, you want someone like this to head up BA of course, but how wonderful that with the continual challenges he faces he thinks he is the luckiest man in the world to have this job. I do not envy him; just admire him for his tenacity, his intelligence and his love of BA. It is often for me the weeks that are filled with meeting people that my brain goes into overdrive as it stimulates new business ideas and thoughts and will maybe take Bales to a new plateau.

For readers that visit the blog regularly you may notice two things about my picture. One thing is that I have aged a decade very quickly and two is the colour of my hair. The age thing is easily answered – the picture of me as a blonde was taken around 10 years ago. I have such an issue about having my picture taken (yes don’t say it – you can see why- it has all been said you know) that our Sales and Marketing Director had to resort to the archives to find a picture. Regarding the colour of my hair – I was born a white blonde and was I thought always blonde - as a young teenager I experimented with colour and I genuinely believed I was a blonde. However, at Christmas I asked the hairdresser to make me really blonde and the result was disastrous – with dark roots (how do I have dark roots when I am a blonde?) coming through rather too prominently making me look rather, well, for want of a better word ‘stupid’. So I went to my natural colour – like it or not. So there you have it..

What a privilege it is to know some people. Peter Hughes, one of the founders of the great Wish You Were Here Travel programme back in the late 70’s is one of those people. Still an avid travel writer – you will see his name frequently in consumer press and magazines under yet another amazing feature he took the time to have lunch with little (well not so little) old me. It would be my dream for Peter to travel everywhere with us so that he can write about it the experience. It is just so wonderful to meet with people who make you excited about working together and what can be achieved.

Chinese New Year celebrations – and a few of us from Bales were guests at a Hong Kong Tourist Association party in London’s West End. It was a great party, everything that the HKTA do, they do well and they are one of the best tourist offices here in the U.K. I don’t know (well of course I don’t) how many of you go to tourist offices for information and if so at what stage of your holiday planning you contact one or more. The good tourist offices are excellent, very pro-active, very supportive to the trade and to the consumer. There are some that are also a waste of space and I simply do not understand why they even invest in resource when they have no funds to do any promotional work? Anyway, if you want more information than we currently give you, (though I know many of you will say it is already very comprehensive) we would be happy to recommend a few tourist boards that we work with.

We have an internal debate going on about whether it is better to bring PR ‘in house’ or whether we should outsource. After over four years of being outsourced, we thought we would experiment with internal PR. I offered to take on the mantel for a while. I did it years ago and absolutely loved it. Things have changed a lot since then and certainly it has its challenges, well actually I that it is much harder than it used to be (Iain are you reading this?) but I am very ably assisted and supported by Camilla at Bales. I think one observation I would have, is that it needs to be a dedicated job for someone nowadays, because as much as it is important, when there are other responsibilities; it sadly slips down the pile of priorities. The main aim of PR is of course to get the name of your company in the media and if that is not being achieved then it is simply not working.

I was invited to be on an interview panel for Blue Badge Guides. I think this was because we are still considering the markets for inbound tourism to the UK and as I feel passionately that good guides really do make such a difference to your holiday experience and I voice this very loudly, one of the Directors of Blue Badge Guides thought my opinions may help. Why did I go? I think you never stop learning and as much as anything it helps me to understand different interview techniques. The calibre is so high, the selection process so rigid. This is not to get a job by the way; this is to be granted a place on a fee paying course to become a guide! We have high standards of guides in many countries that we operate to, and I love the endorsement of Blue Badge. I heartily recommend anyone that wishes to see London or show foreign relatives or friends around to appoint a Blue Badge Guide to accompany you. The experience is amazing, however much you think you know a city as I thought I knew London, there is always a story about the many little passages and buildings that you would not be aware of. It makes a good day fantastic.

I have spoken about the Latin America Travel Association previously. I mention it again as they organised a day when members who are either tour operators, tourist offices or airlines could set up a stall and press were invited to come and meet with all of us. Steve Bray, our Product Manager for Latin America and I went along. Whilst there were not as many press as we would have hoped that attended , it was for me another learning curve as I spoke to many of our colleagues about Latin America and in particular leant so much about the Antarctic, which has now made it number 1 on must go to list.

Last night was an entirely different event. It was an intimate dinner for 20 in London hosted by our lawyers to discuss and debate Directors and Officers Policies. Whilst I really do love the responsibilities that come with being a Director, it does focus your mind on how very seriously you have to contemplate wanting to be a Director and the benefits to you of doing this versus the almost onerous responsibilities that the law now enforce, which I do not see as a bad thing and especially if it protects employees and consumers. It was both a lively and interesting debate that I believe we all learnt from. Today, well I am off to London with my PR hat on, to meet another fine journalist, more about that in a couple of weeks.

Thank you for taking the time to read our diary. Should you have any questions you would like Bales to answer or comments to make about Bales or our website please complete the below.