Booking-World and Cloud-Roam LTD to Launch Greek Tourism Package in India

Two UK-based companies representing Greek interests, Booking-World.com (http://www.booking-world.com) and Cloud-Roam LTD, will be launching a significant tourist package in the Indian market with the support of the chairman of STIC Travel Group, the Indian travel agencies association, Mr. Subhash Goyal.
Mr. Goyal visited the stand of GNTO (Greek National Tourism Organization) at the ITB Berlin 2012 trade show, where the two companies presented their services and products.
The initiative aims at highlighting the values of Greek tourism and the establishment of a business and national friendship between Greece and India, which will boost the arrival rates of Indian tourists to Greece.
The discussion among Mr. Subhash Goyal, Mr. Sotiris Anagnostis, CEO of tourist telecommunications company Cloud-Roam LTD, Mr. Thomas Poulios, CEO of online hotel booking company Booking-World.com, Mr. Panayiotis Skordas, manager of the GNTO in Germany, Mr. Gregory Tassios, president of the Association of Hotel Owners of Chalkidiki, and Mrs. Maria Pampiri, focused on the main problem that deters Indian tourists from visiting Greece, which concerns visa issuance procedures.
The discussion revolved around the ways in which the Greek tourism industry can differentiate its products and services from others and restart the broadening of the target markets in order to reduce investment risks.
The cooperation of the above mentioned sides will soon see results, which will highlight the necessity of transforming and offering Greek tourism services addressing the rapidly growing Indian market.
Moreover, all sides agreed that it is necessary to mobilize all business and entrepreneur bodies into creating a Special Destination Package, which will firstly aim at organizing the initial contact of the potential tourists with Greece within their general visit to the European continent; and secondly, at organizing the exclusive several-day-long visit of Indian tourists to Greece.
At the same time, special emphasis was placed on the possibility of creating a Million Dollar Special Package addressing VIP tourists and more particularly the specific market of Indian millionaires.
By 2012, India will be exporting 50 million visitors, according to the World Tourism Organization.

Do you want to promote your company? “Issue a Press Release”

One of the first things you want to do is make a public announcement, in the form of a press release, that your business exists and is open. This may be the first time anyone has the opportunity to learn about your business and you want to make a good impression on the readers. Very few local publications will print a press release just because you write it and send it in. OK, so maybe they are not as excited as you are about our new endeavor. Find an angle that will make them interested. Once you are certain that the information is indeed newsworthy, a good heading is a great place to start. If you study the regular articles in your daily or weekly papers, you’ll see that the titles of the articles are written to attract the readers’ attention. You need to make their job easy: if they have to work to pull interesting or relevant facts from your piece, they won’t bother. Stick to the facts.

Get the good stuff out up front—in the first ten to 12 words if possible. Don’t use a lot of adjectives. Edit harshly. If you can’t do it, have someone else edit it for you. Provide your contact information:

_ Phone and fax numbers

_ Address

_ URL

_ E-mail address

Use some creativity to get people interested. Look for an interesting angle, an offbeat, comical, or ironic twist. Create your press release with the readers in mind. Make it short, interesting, and above all, give it a catchy title. If you stick to this plan you’ll have a better chance of seeing your press release in print.

As for press kits, don’t waste money on fancy folders. Most of my press kits are e-mailed, faxed, or downloaded from one of my web sites. Include some or all of these in yours:

_ Press releases

_ Bio

_ Company background

_ Clips of other coverage/list of media appearances

_ Suggested interview questions (may be different for print, radio, or TV)

_ Product sample(s)

Include your contact information, including e-mail, web address, and phone on every page.

Many weekly community papers have a feature called “Business of the Week” or “Business Person of the Week.” You’ll have an easier time getting into that feature—at least in the edition that covers your geographic area—if you do a little paid advertising in the publication now and again. Call the editor and ask him or her to consider you for the feature. Provide a photo of you inside or in front of your location. Put together some black-and-white photos, as well as color, for different opportunities that come along.

Why Content Management is Important

Managing content is important to both content requestors and content providers.

When information is requested, it must be assembled correctly so that it can be provided quickly and clearly. It is very easy to overwhelm a request for information by not limiting the scope of what has been requested. In addition to what the user sees, he or she should be guided through web services. These services should help consumers make choices, as opposed to offering too many choices, and prompt optimal choices.

Content Management is also important to content providers because timeliness of the content provided to the user communities is critical so as not expose them to obsolete or premature information. Examples of this have occurred many times for example, when prices of items for sale are marked in error several hundred dollars below what they should be.

Another example of why content management is important is in the case of a large-scale logo change. When a company changes it’s logo or it undergoes a large-scale product branding, it could happen that every page on their site has to be changed. When content management is automated, this change can be made much more quickly and easily.

The importance of Business planning : Thomas' site

There are thousands of companies beginning its operations each day. The majority are an outcome of a brilliant idea with great prospects. What is the problem for the early death of the startups? The biggest issue is the lack of a serious business plan.

The business plan consists of a narrative and several financial worksheets. The narrative template is the body of the business plan. It contains more than 150 questions divided into several sections. Work through the sections in any order that you like, except for the Executive Summary, which should be done last. Skip any questions that do not apply to your type of business. When you are finished writing your first draft, you’ll have a collection of small essays on the various topics of the business plan. Then you’ll want to edit them into a smooth-flowing narrative.

The real value of creating a business plan is not in having the finished product in hand; rather, the value lies in the process of researching and thinking about your business in a systematic way. The act of planning helps you to think things through thoroughly, study and research if you are not sure of the facts, and look at your ideas critically. It takes time now, but avoids costly, perhaps disastrous, mistakes later.

This business plan is a generic model suitable for all types of businesses. However, you should modify it to suit your particular circumstances. Before you begin, review the section titled Refining the Plan, found at the end. It suggests emphasizing certain areas depending upon your type of business (manufacturing, retail, service, etc.). It also has tips for fine-tuning your plan to make an effective presentation to investors or bankers. If this is why you’re creating your plan, pay particular attention to your writing style. You will be judged by the quality and appearance of your work as well as by your ideas.

It typically takes several weeks to complete a good plan. Most of that time is spent in research and re-thinking your ideas and assumptions. But then, that’s the value of the process. So make time to do the job properly. Those who do never regret the effort. And finally, be sure to keep detailed notes on your sources of information and on the assumptions underlying your financial data.

Booking-World.com introduced itself!

Booking-world.com is the newest and fastest growing online hotel booking system, providing the service to any kind of properties, ranging from small independent hotels to five-star luxury accommodations. On the other hand it provides the simplest way for customers to find and book a room. Booking-World.com is a product of thorough research and long experience on hotel industry and e-Business, incorporating the features that the properties asked for and the needs of users for quick and easy search and book.

Some of the strong features are the unlimited number of rooms the property can upload; the property is not obliged to have a minimum number of available rooms in the system. In addition it supports the promotion of the hotels individually to the search engines by placing their own keywords to be visible direct from the search engines. Direct payment to the hotel. Able to confirm or un-confirm the reservation. Connect to get inventory and prices from inventory channels. Low cost system. Special promotion tools (coupons, special offers, events etc). No service fee to the customers.

For more info and registration request: info@booking-world.com

Branding Without a Brand

Most marketing professionals still believe that true branding is based on the logo. But they also know that branding is much more than developing a familiar consumer image.
I realized a couple of years ago, when one of my colleagues was asked by a major U.S. airline to write a standard announcement to be used by the airline's captains, that many operational elements, as well as deliberate promotional strategies, are all integral to branding and the establishment of image and identity.
The speech was carefully composed incorporating the advice of a psychologist and a marketing expert, and the writing of one of the country's best copywriters. The aim was to achieve an announcement that would carry the airline's image message to the passenger, just as the company's logo did. This event made me realize the full potential of branding: the 360 degrees that I briefly discussed last week. And 360-degree branding is everything.
Singapore Airlines is an example of a company cognizant of 360-degree branding. A decade ago, the airline developed what is now the well-known Singapore Airlines smell. The hot towels the flight attendants distribute before and after takeoff all emit a characteristic aroma that, once experienced, is not forgotten.
So, what has a smell got to do with branding? Everything. We have five senses, and for some reason we often think only of using one or two of them. Research conducted a year or so ago showed that aural communication is just as important as oral communication. Testing Intel Inside, the researchers documented the interesting result that the Intel melody was as recognizable and memorable to the consumer as the Intel Inside logo.
What does this have to do with the Internet? The fact is that we have achieved only the management of what I define as the "level one" web site: a web site that sort of handles the graphics but falls short of integrating other sensory stimuli.
The reason why I say "sort of" is because I still, day after day, see web sites that don't exploit visuals well. Do you remember the story about the Coke bottle? It was designed so that if it was smashed, you'd still be able to recognize that the fragments were once part of a Coca-Cola bottle. Now, that's branding!
What if you were to remove your logo and your company name from your web site? Would I still be able to recognize your brand? I bet I couldn't. Everything on your web site has to reflect your core philosophy, the spirit of your brand, just like Singapore Airlines' hot towels and the captains' announcement.
Every single element you employ should be an extension of your logo: The copy should be the voice of your brand; the navigation should reflect the spirit and ethos of your brand in every degree; your site's sounds should be your brand's voice. Think of the identity that AOL's "You've got mail" communicates.
Every element of your site's construction and operation should be fully conveyed by your branding aims and integrated to communicate a seamless and comprehensible story. The integration principle is crucially relevant to all your channels and their intercommunications so that, wherever consumers encounter your business, they are able to recognize it instantly: in your store, on billboards, dealing with your staff, on the radio... even without seeing your logo. That's 360-degree branding: branding without using a brand.

Booking-World.com Doing Business on “Niche” Markets

What Is a “Niche”?

Let’s get down to business and define just what the term niche means. It sounds like kind of a fancy French term (which it is). It sounds like it rhymes with riche, as in nouveau riche (which it does). And while the nouveau riche (the newly rich) are often made fun of, it is better to be nouveau riche than never riche at all! The word niche brings to mind something small. Something manageable. A realm in which you can build your business and avoid many of the pitfalls waiting for any entrepreneur. And so a niche business is…what, exactly? Simply stated, it is a business created to profitably serve the needs of a niche market. And doesn’t that sound like where you want to be?

Why Niche?

What’s so great about starting and running a niche business? Business is business, right? After talking with hundreds of businessowners we’ve come up with some compelling reasons why you, too, should niche and get rich. v You’ll stand a great chance of succeeding. Now that is a big claim to make. Why should a niche business be any likelier to succeed? Because you are positioning yourself as a bigger fish in a smaller pond. With that comes greater market power and with greater market power comes greater stability, pricing power, and profitability, and a more loyal customer base. You aren’t as exposed to the whims of the economy, nor to those of the competition.

• It will be easier to find customers. Easier? Why? Because the tighter your niche, the better you will be able to capture customers, focus on their needs, and meet those needs. The customers you capture will be the right customers—ones you can do business with over and over again.
• You’ll have less competition. A famous American general maintained that the secret to winning is to “get there firstest with the mostest.” You’ll be the first to serve your niche and should therefore capture the largest market share. Market leaders control markets so long as they preserve their advantage. They are the first to respond to trends, set the pace on product and service deployment, and set the terms on price. Isn’t that where you want to be? You understand the market and lead the way in meeting its needs—creating what Warren Buffett would call a “moat” around your business and protecting it against competition as long as you stay in touch with your niche. Competition may happen, but you’ll have a leg up, especially in the beginning.
• You’ll make more money. Not only will you have more control over pricing and profit margins in your business, some operating expenses will be lower too. With a captive niche less will be spent for promotion and advertising to acquire new customers and preserve market share. Word-of-mouth is a powerful advertising tool in a well-defined niche.
• You’ll be able to do it over and over again. Once you’ve built one successful niche business and understand the thought process behind it, what is to stop you from using that same knowledge to build a similar business that serves a slightly different niche? Or to add products and services to more profitably serve the existing niche? Such crossover niching works well—to identify new products and services to serve your existing niche or find new niches receptive to your current products and services. Online entrepreneur John Drummond and his wife, Amy, founded Unicycle.com, and quickly built a successful business shipping unicycles to customers around the world. “Now that I know how to build a Web site that caters to a specialized niche, I’m on the lookout for more ideas. Ideally I’d like to have five different niche Web sites, each pulling in a million dollars a year,” says John. Maybe accident and health insurance is a good “crossover” product to introduce to the unicycle niche? More seriously, t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other “ephemera” would work, and who’s to say unicycles couldn’t “cross over” to the extreme sports, scooter, and skateboard crowd?
• You won’t be caught off guard by market changes. In many niche businesses you are the perfect target customer; when your interest or needs shift or change, you’ll know your customers will soon be shifting as well. Large corporations run from remote headquarters offices are the last to hear their customers have changed, defected, or otherwise moved on. But if you run a store for middle-aged surfers because you are a middle-aged surfer who didn’t feel comfortable buying in an atmosphere designed to appeal to young boys, you will be smack dab in the thick of things. And when your customers start looking for bright green shirts instead of pale yellow ones, you’ll know it immediately. As a niche business owner, you will be nimble and swift. Just as in the example above, you will be able to quickly adapt to changes in your niche. A niche seller of ethnic cooking ingredients will be able to adapt much faster and more favorably than a supermarket to the latest cooking trends.
• It is often easier to get financing for a niche business. A lender who thinks you understand your market and are well positioned to serve it profitably is more likely to invest in you than another “me too” business and business plan.