In todays comment in Travelmole Jeremy Skidmore - www.jeremyskidmore.com - says the major tour operators have a major problem in a fast changing market.  Their products are basically the same and broadly they have the same vertical integration with their smaller subsiduaries and airlines etc.  Their passengers are increasingly wanting more 'Dynamic' products.

I agree with Jeremy. The mainstream operators have a problem - but like TUI they are attempting to adapt!

The real opportunity is for specialist operators, but they need buy in more effective reservations and distribution software in order to take advantage of the situation. This will not only significantly reduce costs through lower operating overheads and fewer staff, it will also provide the flexibility to introduce 'Dynamic' products that are needed to increase bookings and margins.

New tour management systems are far less expensive than legacy software and costs much less to operate. Most importantly, the latest technology - like our MARS application - integrates links to suppliers to provide the depth and volume of product that today's market demands.

I read in this weeks Travel Weekly that Olympic Holidays reservations system went down on Easter Monday evening and that the whole days bookings were lost - AMAZING!!

How on earth do you lose a whole days trading in this day and age! Even if you Server crashes the software should be backing up at regular times during the day to ensure that there is minimal loss of data - valuable bookings in this case!

At Mach Associates our standard Server configuration backs up every three hours which is the maximum time that books could be lost for.  Many customers choose to have a solution that will only loose a few minutes worth of bookings as the worst case sanario.  These days it does not cost too much either - certainly compared to the old legacy systems still in use by some!

If anyone from Olympic Holidays reads this..get in touch...we need to talk!!