It's a funny old business

One of the fun parts of the travel industry is listening to all the moans and groans from other agents and tour operators.

The fun part of this for me is watching agents complain about tour operators through social networking, or to other agents, about a certain company, then a month or so later you see them at an event hosted by the very operator they were “slagging off” only last week, taking full advantage of their hospitality!

Then you have the other side with tour operator's who seem to be more interested in running their competitors down when they visit my shops, than updating me with their latest news and offers.

For years this has kept me entertained and has become part of my everyday working life and it really did not bother me until recently, and I felt I had to write a blog to get it off my chest.

This all goes back about 5 months when Western & Oriental (I thought long and hard about naming the company, but feel they should be mentioned) were being taken over. The travel press really went to town on the company and I think it was a case of a great headline, but no story.

The guys at W & O, especially Steve O’Loughlin and Ray Steward had been keeping us up to date with the developments and, as I have trust in them, could see that the press were a million miles away from what was actually happening.

Anyway that is not what has been annoying me. It’s the constant barrage of criticism that is being used to “gain an advantage” at the expense of others and, in addition, the use of Twitter to get issues across, which we all know is very public.

If I have an issue, I speak directly to the person concerned and thrash it out, and if it cannot be solved, I either decide to let it go or do not deal with that company or person again, but I would never make it public.

If other operators feel that certain companies are a threat to them, then they need to look at their own business and work out why they see them as a threat.

My support for companies like Western & Oriental will always be there as I can easily have an open conversation with all people concerned, but most of all they have a quality product which matters to me and my clients.

We are all struggling during this recession and really should be concentrating on our own businesses rather than picking fights with each other.

Anyway who cares what I think, just another boring blog!!!!!!