Archive for November, 2007
I visited Venice for the first time, earlier this year and found it to be an extraordinary place. It must be one of the most well known cities in the world and I was familiar with it from countless TV shows, films and magazine articles. Even though I had a very clear idea in my minds eye of how it would look and feel, I still found it breathtaking. So why do I say “I hate Venice”? Well it’s not Venice I hate so much as people like you and me and how we get in the way of the experience. When I got to Saint Mark’s square it was so crowded that not even the unseasonally warm April sunshine could soothe my crowd-hating soul. I couldn’t wait to leave the square and retreat to an uncrowded back street where dogs barked and the water from a nearby drinking fountain splashed on cool dark cobblestones.
November 29th, 2007
For some reason, I had Paul Simon’s song playing in my head while I was composing this post. You know the one “50 Ways to Leave your Lover”
You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
While I remain fully committed to my beautiful wife, I have been finding 50 ways to leave another relationship. Here at myguideTravel being destination specialists, we are discovering 50 ways to leave the proprietary software vendors behind. In some cases, we have come back to a proprietary solution and in others we are using a hybrid solution. However, in most cases we have moved to an open source or free model.
November 21st, 2007
On Monday, November 12, 2007, I visited the ExCeL Centre in the London Docklands for the annual World Travel Market. I have been to this event several times before but it never fails to amaze me. The event is a business to business gathering of global travel trade industry and each year it seems to get better. People from each corner of the earth convene to meet, network, negotiate and catch up on the latest developments in the industry.
November 14th, 2007
Thursday, November 1st, 2007 was a day of celebration in the myguideTravel offices. It wasn’t that we enjoyed a record haul of candy on Halloween but rather that our contract with the Scottish airline flyGlobespan expired. For those of you unfamiliar with them, please allow me to explain why it was such a joyous occasion. In late 2006, we partnered with Ireland West Airport Knock to establish the first scheduled trans-Atlantic air services from it to the USA. The team at IWA Knock worked tirelessly to get the service up and r
unning and we supported the launch of the non-stop flights to Boston Logan and New York JFK airports by taking a hard block of inventory from flyGlobespan on all their departures. It was a massive financial commitment for us but we felt that it was a prudent investment and that we were entering into a mutually beneficial partnership with the airport authority and airline to ensure the success of the endeavor. There was plenty of enthusiasm on both sides of the Atlantic and, with Tourism Ireland also offering support, we were convinced it was going to be a success. Boy, were we wrong!
November 11th, 2007
Growing up in Co. Cork during the Northern Ireland troubles, almost everyone complained about the British Government. It was a controversial time and clearly the British government found themselves in a very difficult situation. One of my abiding memories of that time was the number of own goals that the British scored politically.
Be it internment where 2,000 Irishmen were imprisoned without trial in the 1970’s or the hunger strikes of the 1980’s where 10 men starved to death. The actions of the British government in both occasions appeared to be counter-intuitive, even to a child like me. While the situations were undoubtedly complex, they were certainly handled badly by the British government at the time.
November 9th, 2007
I visited Venice for the first time, earlier this year and found it to be an extraordinary place. It must be one of the most well known cities in the world and I was familiar with it from countless TV shows, films and magazine articles. Even though I had a very clear idea in my minds eye of how it would look and feel, I still found it breathtaking. So why do I say “I hate Venice”? Well it’s not Venice I hate so much as people like you and me and how we get in the way of the experience. When I got to Saint Mark’s square it was so crowded that not even the unseasonally warm April sunshine could soothe my crowd-hating soul. I couldn’t wait to leave the square and retreat to an uncrowded back street where dogs barked and the water from a nearby drinking fountain splashed on cool dark cobblestones.