Apologies for the silence around here in recent weeks. It’s been a busy summer and time has not really been on my side as far as Travel Shorthand has been concerned. However, things should get back to normal in September.

Amidst the chaos, I have been able to catch a few episodes of The Secret Tourist which is the BBC’s latest attempt to scare the crap out of anyone going on holiday this summer.

If you took this programme too seriously you wouldn’t venture out of your hotel room for fear of getting ripped off by the taxi driver and then conned by the restaurant or shop or whoever you may visit. Except you shouldn’t stay in your hotel because you’ll probably catch something off the pool or your bed. And don’t even think about doing anything active.

I don’t really have a problem with the tremendously earnest Carole Machin finding everything so alarming. The section of the show that is slightly more problematic is the undercover family that visits an underperforming hotel. The researchers look for a poorly rated hotel on Trip Advisor and send a family over to look for all the bad bits and unsurprisingly they find it to be an underperforming hotel.

Which is all fine, but why show this in July and August? It’s hardly prime booking season and anyone who has a stay booked at one of the featured hotels is going to find it hard to switch to anything else. I’m sure a few tour operators have received calls from worried travellers as a result of this section, but this far into the season they will be limited in what they can do.

Tackling a poor hotel in early to mid season is also unlikely to yield much in the way of results. The underperforming staff will all be firmly entrenched for the season and the hapless manager will blunder his way through to the end. At least it shows what the operations staff of tour operators are up against when they try to get hotels to make improvements.

And this is the interesting thing about the show; although The Secret Tourist is hardly a good thing for the UK travel industry, it does go easy on it. The programme goes straight to the source and refrains from naming any tour operators that sell the hotels featured.

Previous BBC consumer looks at travel such as That’s Life and Watchdog would have hauled some hapless tour operator into the studio to ask why a hotel it features is so poor. Now the focus is on the people running the hotels, which is how it should be.

Unfortunately, the programme highlights how little some of these hotels care and if a tour operator cuts them from their programme they’re generally confident that they’ll find another one to take the rooms. That’s how it works in such a price-driven market. But with so many bargain tour operators going to the wall at the moment it might not be so easy.

Many words have been written already about The Times paywall and there’s no point in trying to look at the implications for the media when people like David Hepworth do it so well. But what are the implications for travel sections?

At least Hepworth coughed up his pound to take a look at what they had to offer. I took one look from a travel point of view and thought “you want me to pay £1 for that?” There’s little in the way of trailers or anything to tempt you into the travel section. On a Sunday, the online edition at least tells you what is in the travel section, during the week, it doesn’t even do that.

The Times may argue that if you buy the paper edition you cannot see what is inside. But if I buy the paper edition of the Times I will generally spend a fair amount of time reading it. Online, like many people, I’ll spend twenty minutes here or there and it’s a snack not a feast. For me to pay for the snack I want to know what I’m going to get.

Does the travel section of a newspaper appear online as well as the rest of the paper? I’m not sure. I have spoken before about the relationship travel editors have with travel companies and although, in my experience, most travel companies are more interested in the print edition, there’s no denying that the online copy provides greater longevity for a piece and is useful if people are searching for something specific.

However, travel pieces, particularly in The Times, can be quite long and I’ll only generally read them if they are writing about a destination, or by someone that is of interest to me. So why doesn’t The Times offer more of a preview of its online content? I really don’t know, if you do please let me know. As it stands, I’m not tempted to pay only to find stories about cruises, or other areas of travel that are of little interest to me.

I wish The Times all the best, I really hope it works for the sake of journalists everywhere. But blindly expecting everyone to  pay seems slightly arrogant to me. I’m afraid that if they want me to pay to access the travel section they’re going to have to  sell it to me and they’re just not doing that at the moment.

Rupert Murdoch has finally announced that he is going to put a paywall up for The Times from June. This has been threatened for a long time, so it is hardly news and there are people far more qualified to talk about it than me, such as Jeremy Head and Tom Whitwell.

I would like to comment specifically on the travel section and the implications of a firewall. As Jeremy points out, travel journalism has suffered as much as any other part of journalism over recent years, but will a paywall help matters?

The travel section is not essential reading

Part of the problem of putting everything behind a paywall is that all the content of the Times is now treated as equal in value to the reader. I like the travel content of The Times and definitely think it does travel better than most of its peers, but would I pay £1 a day for the travel content? Probably not. I fear that with a paywall The Times will now monitor very closely what the paying online customer is viewing and tailor its online news mix accordingly. If  this is the case then the online content will probably start centering on business news, sport, current affairs and areas such as travel will be sidelined.

Travel is not time specific

There is no urgency in reading the travel section, therefore if you are only really interested in travel content you will probably pay your £1 for one day and read the previous couple of weeks’ features. This makes travel even less of a commercial proposition behind a paywall.

Travel has a different commercial position within a newspaper

Travel relies on commercial relationships probably more than every other part of a paper. In order to put a piece together the travel section may be looking for complimentary flights, accommodation, etc. This is all given on the understanding that the donor will receive a certain amount of “free” publicity in return.

The rumour is that The Times will consider the paywall a success if online traffic falls to 5% of its current level and anything below 3% will be considered a problem. Now consider you are the Travel Editor of The Times trying to organise a piece about Slovenia. You phone the Slovenian tourist board asking for complimentary flights, accommodation, etc. for a journalist, but have to explain that online traffic will be a fraction of what it was previously, it won’t be found on Google and it will be impossible to link to the article. It no longer seems so appealing to the Slovenian tourist board.

There is a lot of competition for travel content

The editor of the Times could put 90% of the online budget into travel or he could put it into business or politics. Which area would come back with the most unique content? Almost certainly not travel. Even if every UK newspaper put its content behind a paywall there would still be plenty of great travel content available online from Australia, Ireland, Canada, US and South Africa. That’s not even including the many commercial travel content providers.

On a more positive note

As Tom Whitmore says, the pricing policy of The Times doesn’t appear to be set to make money from online content, it appears geared to protect the paper copy. This could be a good thing for travel writing as travel works best, both in terms of content and for advertisers, with the hard copy. I don’t think the promise of more video, etc. will have make me want the Times travel online, but if the paywall ensures the future of the travel section in The Times and The Sunday Times then it is surely a good thing.

Happy New Year. As everyone trudges back to work for one of the busiest periods in the travel calendar, Thomson, First Choice and Thomas Cook are on our screens with their annual television campaigns. So what do we make of this year’s offerings?

Thomson have gone for a fairly safe re-hash of last year’s ad, where all your friendly Thomson staff are super caring, attentive and diligent.

Thomas Cook’s ad is a real mess. Taking the celebrity route with the poor man’s Posh & Becks, Jamie and Louise Redknapp, it’s a 30-second disaster. There’s lots of Jamie and Louise showing off their bodies and their wardrobes but quite what it all has to do with Thomas Cook I really don’t know. The reaction of almost everyone I’ve seen the ad with has been,”as if they’d go on holiday with Thomas Cook!”

Maybe they would, but….. Isn’t this the same Louise and Jamie that launched Icon Magazine, trying to tell us that only the world’s most exclusive, iconic brands are good enough for Premiership footballers?

The First Choice ad is a very simple, traditional affair that is essentially a few kids swimming  in a pool, with the line “the better the children’s pool, the quieter the adult pool.” Which isn’t always true, but we get the point.

So which one is your favourite?

It’s hard to tell with Ryanair if they are genuinely angry at their treatment at the hands of Panorama or whether they are just trying to court as much publicity out of the programme as possible. Either way, it’s unlikely the programme will have any harmful effect on their business.

There are several statements on the Ryanair website criticising Panorama and the correspondence between the two makes for an entertaining read:

Panorama: Is there an “ideal” Ryanair customer?

Ryanair: Yes. Any human being with a brain, a pulse and a credit card, who doesn’t want to be ripped off with BA or Easyjet’s high fares and frequently delayed flights.

In truth, the Panorama documentary was fairly benign and contained little that anyone with even a passing knowledge of Ryanair wouldn’t have already known. Panorama seems to have been in decline for years and it was like watching a tired old boxer trying to land punches and repeatedly missing.

Even the “disgruntled employees” Panorama found to make statements about Ryanair didn’t really have anything particularly damning to say. In one extremely pointless section, the Panorama reporter went to an Airbus press conference to try and stir up trouble, but failed miserably.

The whole gist of this section and an interview with a boss of a Swedish airport was that Ryanair use all their negotiating power and screw their suppliers for everything they can get, as if this is a crime. The same accusations could be made at virtually any major company.

Ryanair like to play with the media and I think the way they are now calling themselves Britain’s Favourite Airline is quite amusing. I also find the way boss Michael O’Leary can’t seem to finish a sentence without using the words customer and service interesting.

However, there’s a fine line between appearing playful and appearing childish. Their argument with Panorama seems to centre around Panorama saying Ryanair wanted editorial control over any interview and Ryanair denying this, saying they just wanted the interview broadcast unedited. You could argue that denying Panorama the right to edit an interview is exercising editorial control. You can’t help but think O’Leary would have been better off agreeing to be interviewed. Failing to do so made it look like he has something to hide, which he probably hasn’t.

Apart from making me question whether it would be enjoyable working for Ryanair – any company that decides pilots can’t have water any more would have me turning up for work each day expecting to find my chair replaced with a couple of milk crates – the programme made me wonder what has happened to Panorama and wishing I’d watched Masterchef instead. At least the programme that followed, Life, reminded us of the brilliance the BBC is still capable of.

If you have a look at the Breckenridge website everything seems fine. Large images, including a nice family one of a girl and a big dog are all part of a neatly-designed site.

Then you click on the Facebook link at the bottom of the page and all of a sudden you are being spoken to in a different language. The intro tells you the resort is now open for the 2006-7 season and looks like it was written by a 13 year-old.

I don’t want to seem unduly harsh, but isn’t the notion that the website is for the “adults” and the Facebook for the “kids” a little bit too simple these days? And is swearing and calling the resort a “friggin classic” the best way to get to the kids?

It’s a dilemma for ski resorts, because they want to attract the younger image-conscious skiers and boarders, but is this the best way? Maybe it is, maybe ski resorts should throw over their social media to the kids and give a young person freedom to do as they please.

The danger is that an old goat like me comes across a page sanctioned by the resort that is filled with swearing and it might just leave a nasty impression.

The other danger is that if you give your social media over to a skier or boarder, you lose control over it and it simply looks out-of-date and unprofessional.

Am I just old fashioned, should the ski resorts find the first bunch of young boarders sat on their backsides and ask them to run their social media in the hope that it will have a bit of an edge to it?

Do resorts keep their social media official or set it up so that it no longer looks like it is in any way associated with the resort or the tourist office? Or is it possible to use social media in a way that attracts younger people but doesn’t alienate others? If you were running a ski resort what would you do?

Question: You’re a tour operator and you’ve been trying to push a resort for a while and finally you agree to do a piece with a national newspaper. The travel editor says he has two people who could write the article; one is a well-respected and experienced travel journalist, the other is a C-list celebrity whose agent has suggested she does some travel writing.

do you:

a) ask for the travel journalist because you would like to be associated with a well-written, accurate piece of journalism?

or

b) ask for the celebrity in the belief that it will attract more readers and some of the celebrity’s current shine will rub off on your brand?

There is currently an interesting article on The Age bemoaning the state of travel stories, saying most travel writers are beholden to the people that pay for their trips and as a result most pieces become bland advertorial. Reading the comments it seems quite a few people are in agreement.

When I started this blog I did a round-up of the weekend’s travel stories. I’ve stopped doing it partly because it was very time consuming, but also because I became tired of reading all the celebrity travel pieces. I think the tipping point was reading about Danny Wallace driving around Australia for about the tenth week in search of giant plastic fruit. I wasn’t expecting Freya Stark, but I was expecting to read about more than giant plastic strawberries.

There were beacons of hope; The FT, The Times and The Independent are still largely celebrity-free. However, elsewhere in the UK’s media, travel editors do seem to be more and more starstruck. But, what’s wrong with celebrities writing travel stories?

Just because someone is good at looking pretty in front of a camera and reading an autocue doesn’t mean they can write great travel stories. Celebrities have a tendency to be vapid narcissists so most articles will start with “I” and carry on that way for most of the piece. It’s even worse if the celebrity happens to have children, as the space devoted to the resort or hotel diminishes to virtually nothing. For celebrities, it’s not their day job so they are unlikely to put as much research or effort into the writing. Most travel journalists care about their reputation within the travel industry, celebrities don’t. The travel journalists I have dealt with have generally been personable and cooperative, if occasionally a little cheeky. I have never seen them be rude and hostile to resort staff in the way celebrities have been.

For travel editors the lure of a well-known name is understandable. As budgets are becoming increasingly tight, celebrities can appear to be good value. For them, it’s not the day job and a free holiday with a bit of PR for their upcoming appearance on Strictly Come Dancing might be all they are looking for. Of course, there’s also the belief in our celebrity-obsessed culture that names sell.

But who benefits in the long run? As budgets tighten are celebrities really the answer to the problems travel editors face? If people are driven to read a story only because of the celebrity who has written it, does it really benefit the operators who fund most of these pieces? There’s still a lot of great travel writing out there, but at the moment I don’t go much beyond reading this every month.

The Daily Mail has a piece today entitled Falling pound spells costlier holidays abroad for UK holidaymakers.

Why is the UK media so intent on making life even harder for UK travel companies than it already is? Although the article is basically true, it does its best to mislead.

Firstly, the title suggests sterling is falling. This isn’t the case; over recent weeks it has stabilised and even staged a (very mini) recovery.

Secondly, the piece goes on to state that since the end of July 2007, the pound has fallen 27.7% in value against the euro. This is taking the euro at a peak of 1.48 and comparing it to a rate of around 1.07. It is currently around the 1.13 mark. The above line certainly seems to suggest that the current rate is 27.7% less than two years ago. In fact, if you compare today (1.136) with two years ago (1.475) it is 22.98% down.

It might all seem like a matter of degree, but why make out that things are worse than they actually are?

So now we aren’t all avoiding the Eurozone after all, according to the Telegraph.

The travel media has been peddling this “story” for months now only for The Great Escape to turn into La Grande Rentrée.

The problem with this story is that you can write about Turkey and Dubai as much as you like, but there aren’t really many alternatives to Europe if you want a value holiday. For “the continuing strength of the euro against sterling” you can just as easily read “the continuing weakness of sterling against everything”.

People may well be looking for better value alternatives within Europe, but to dismiss the whole area on the strength of its currency has been fairly ridiculous.

The Daily Mail says Freedom Direct have left 200 Britons ‘stranded’. The CAA says all 200 will be able to complete their holidays and fly home as normal.

Are they really stranded or was the “DAILY MAIL REPORTER” just looking for a nice headline that could include the word Britons?