Archive for June 30, 2010
An Argument for “Live Chat” on Travel Sites.
01 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
A recent Phocuswright report titled, “On Again, Off Again: Why Online Travelers Book Offline” shows that the biggest reason that consumer book offline is due to wanting personal service:
Certainly the growing popularity of using social media in the sphere of customer service should help drop this number, but does this not also show the potential for putting live chat prominently on booking sites to try to keep clients from leaving the web and transferring their shopping to a more labor intensive call center? I would argue that the next two reasons would be smoothed via online chat as well in that a company could assure their shoppers that there aren’t better deals available by calling and that customer service is just as good online as it is offline. Certainly this all assumes that a companies customer service is at an even level across all channels. Having dealt with a variety of travel companies I know that this is definitely not the case. Perhaps the solution is to simply concentrate on and ensure the same quality of customer service no matter how a consumer reaches the company, thoughts?
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Intrawest Pulling an ASC?
01 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Intrawest is now exploring the sale of Whistler Blackcomb, it’s crown jewel, just a few short months after the 2010 Olympic Winter Games were hosted there. Not many years ago, the now defunct American Ski Company, sold off property after property until it consisted of just The Canyons, which was what ASC considered to be it’s flagship resort. In recent months, Intrawest has renegotiated it’s mammoth debt and sold off numerous properties including:
- Copper Mountain, Colorado (November 2009)
- Les Arcs 1950, France (October 2009)
- Flaine Montsoleil development, France (October 2009)
- Panorama Mountain Village, British Columbia (January 2010)
- Mountain Creek, New Jersey (May 2010)
- Sandestin Golf & Beach Resort, Florida (March 2010)
- The Village at Squaw Valley, California (January 2010)
Including Whistler Blackcomb, Intrawest still has full, or partial ownership of seven mountain resorts, heli skiing operations, a beach property in Sandestin, Florida as well as the private resort club called Club Intrawest. Without Whistler Blackcomb in it’s portfolio, it would seem financially the company should be in better financial shape, but without a key property to be it’s headliner. It will be interesting to see if Intrawest fares better than ASC did.
(Resort ownership information was pulled from the Wikipedia Intrawest article.)
