Representatives from TravelManager will be travelling to Austin, Texas to attend the SxSW Interactive conference. Its been a couple of years since we last went but we are expecting to see some exciting and innovative technology that we can bring into the TravelManager platform over the coming months.
Also looking forward to some of that great Texas BBQ 
Regards
Here is a sneak preview of the tours sat within the GPN website design.
We will have more screenshots within the week
Internet technology is changing the world and today Apple release their vision of the future of Internet access. The iPad Tablet is the starting point for an even more connected customer, but do your staff have the right tools?
TravelManager Lauching App for iPad Tablet
If you’re not online, you don’t exist to a growing customer base. This customer wants to work with you on their terms, when and where they want. Is your business ready for the future?
**TravelManager are leading the group travel and transport industry, why don’t you join us when we launch next month at UMA in Las Vegas.
Regards,
Eamonn Hughes
TravelManager has been developed as a platform for the Bus, Motorcoach and Tours Industry where operators and vendors can work together in bettering the industry.
Turn your ideas into Sales 
Integrate your solution using the TravelManager API’s and get access to your target audience in 30+ countries. Join a community of passionate developers from independents developers to inhouse developers to software companies in areas from GPS tracking, Ticketing, CRM, Marketing, Recruitment, Analytics, Business Intelligence and more..
**Get your solution infront of qualified buyers today by contacting info@gotravelmanager.com
The new EasyBusRental.com website powered by TravelManager has been extremely well received at the ABA Marketplace event in Gaylord National Hotel & Conference Center . All the Tour Operators and Group Transport buyers we’ve met over the last few days are really excited about using the service. The common message we’re hearing is the difficulty they have finding good companies in different areas and that the typical quote response times are in days rather than hours.
EasyBusRental Beta Website - Launched at ABA Marketplace
There’s a huge opportunity for Bus Operators to get more business from National buyers if they provide quality information on their profiles. Our focus over the next few weeks is improve the quality of our existing Bus Operators profile information to move the site from Beta to version 1.0 at the next major event (UMA Motorcoach Expo).
**Version 2.0 will include real-time online booking later in the year.
For the last few months we’ve been working with lead Motorcoach and Tour Companies in designing a new Tours module in TravelManager.
Now that we have some of our users live with Tours on their website and with more to following in the coming weeks it’s a pretty exciting time for Tours. However this is just the starting point over the coming months we want to help more of our existing and new users to get up and running.
If you’re listing your Tours as PDF’s on your website, you’re missing a huge opportunity with the search engines. They love content and by using Tours in TravelManager you get to leverage that content to drive more traffic to your website.
Our goal is bring new and innovative features to TravelManager that will really help sell and promote your Tours. For us this means really listening to your feedback and sharing ideas on how to market your Tours more effectively. Search Engines, Social Networks are potential growth areas for your business, let us help you get the most out of these.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Eamonn
With the increasing number of ways for customers to express their opinion about your product or service there’s a new trend to monitor sentiment on the Internet. Basically it’s about tracking whether the crowds opinion is positive or negative in blogs, social networks, news articles, online forums etc.
Good and Bad Sentiment Online
What does this mean for the Motorcoach industry? Well not a whole lot at the moment, but there’s an opportunity here to get and stay ahead of your competitors by starting to invest in your online reputation.
This is more than optimizing your website for search engines and more about really listening to what’s being said about your company good and bad. In fact as often is the case with dealing with traditional customer complaints, dealing with the negative effectively can often turn into a positive experience for the disgruntled customer.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to share my experiences about Twitter and similar tools you can use to manage your online reputation.
Regards,
Eamonn
*Data mining and connecting with services like Facebook and Twitter will be part of TravelManager in 2010 to help our users connect with new customers and retain existing ones.
Don’t just take my word for it! Recent Article in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/technology/internet/24emotion.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all
It’s very easy to setup an online advertisement campaign but unfortunately it’s not so easy to manage and insure you’re getting value for money.
They’re are a lot of companies paying too much per click and not enough time tracking the value of the clicks. Remember Google only started Adwords in Oct 2000 with about 350 customers, but by 2007 they had over 1m advertisers. Worse still the benefit of an level playing field Adwords brought to advertising is being eroded with large national brokers massively out spending local operators (often paying too much themselves!!!).
Wasting dollars by not tracking online advertisement conversions?
The industry needs to get back to connecting with their customers and leveraging the Internet as a more than a just a lead generator to a customer service and relationship management tool.
The Internet is maturing and so should our attitude to how we use it to grow revenues.
Regards,
Eamonn