Sunset Resorts uses Social Media as Travel Agent Training

Sunset Resorts Jamaica has several videos on YouTube that are packed full of information for travel agents.

OK, so Steve is very excited about his property. And he does a good job providing plenty of sales information for travel agents, but I wonder if he could have provided the same info for the travelers, so agents could also use the video as a sales tool?

Coummunity Service

Every year I offer a free web site to a none profit organization as a community service.

It’s important for all businesses to give back to the community whenever possible, to support social services and programs, education, spiritual or religious beliefs, the arts and other activities that add to the community.

What to expect from your web site:

  • A simple website to explain your organization’s goals & mission, and that can expand as your organization expands.
  • Photo albums
  • Blogging, including rss (real simple syndication) feeds.
  • Access for 1 or several employees or members to add to or change information.
  • Form pages for creating an email list (managed by you or someone else), or gathering information from viewers.
  • A donation link with Paypal or a bank of your choice.
  • No limit on how many pages you can create or pictures (well maybe not over 10,000 pictures) you can upload.
  • 50 free email addresses, more can be purchased at a minimal fee.
  • Off site links.
  • A Calendar for listing events.

Our guarantee is simple and to the point. From the date of publication of your web site, WebSailingDesigns.com will modify all pages to meet your final satisfaction for a full year. We will modify text, images, colors and links to assure your goals are met for your web site.

The only requirement is that you are a nonprofit
community service organization.

If you have a community service organization in need of a website, please contact us so that we can discuss the project and whether or not we can be of assistance.

WordPress Updating

WordPress is adding a new description to their Resume:

I Always thought blogging was social, but now WordPress will take it to a new level. The goal is to leave MySpace and FaceBook in the dust.

WordPress
Matt Mullenweg says; The world doesn’t need another social network, it needs a thousand networks that let you own your data and interconnect using open standards. We invest countless hour giving our data to networks like MySpace, essentially sharecropping on their land for the privilege of being able to connect to our friends. It’s our friends, our time, our connections, our data — it should be our software.
It make sense to have control of the look and feel of your design, but also what and who you share your pages with.

The update has been extended for another week to March 17th +/- a day or more, and it maybe a couple of more days before it finally gets to your browser. You can expect there's going to be some work to the themes and plugins to upgrade to the new 2.5.

Because of the extra time it will take before all the plugins and themes are ready there will be some time to do some preparation & cleaning including:

  1. Change and clean the navigation: I always recommend a well thought out navigation system and looking at my own sites, well Its a good time to re-think the categories.
  2. Fix broken links internal and external links.
  3. Make sure each page has all the meta tags, title, keywords, and description tags.
  4. Check for missing image tags: alt, height and width tags.
  5. Add a contact pages.

I do back ups weekly and it will be part of the requirements for upgrading to the new WordPress 2.5 so it you haven't done that in a while know is the time, and check it to make sure it's readable.

Home Based Travel Agent Show

Home based travel agents

Baltimore Maryland
October 28th – 29th 2008
at Town and Country Resort & Convention Center

This event is for travel agents who want to expand their knowledge in this relatively new market, being home based. The Home Based Agent Show is produced by Travel Industry Shows and is co-sponsored by OSSN, the largest and most credible organization of Home Based agents with over 7,000 members.

Beyond the Earn more, learn more focus, the trade show, gives travel agent delegates an unequaled opportunity to go one-on-one with more than 250 domestic and international suppliers.

Forums will Include:

  • Technology Forum
  • Tours Cruises
  • Honeymoon & Romantic Getaways
  • Family Travel

The Technology Forum will discussed building your business with websites and email marketing, managing your clients and marketing with customer relationship management systems(crms) online booking programs and keeping up with supplier specials.

For suppliers and attendees register at: HomeBasedAgentShow.com

For suppliers who wish to sign up now to ensure the best available location on the trade show floor, contact Jim Cloonan at 617.744.1671, or contact him via e-mail at jim@travelindustryshows.com.

The Home Based Agent Show is produced by Travel Industry Shows and is co-sponsored
by OSSN.

St. Patrick’s Irish Fam Trip

from Brian Mundy:

In 1991 I had the honor (with a group of American travel agents) of hosting IQOTC’s first St. Patrick’s Irish fam trip, and to participate in our first live Parade in Limerick. My wife and I have returned every year since, taking with us over those years almost 800 travel agents from almost every state in the USA. It has been an amazing 16 years; with more precious memories than we could have ever dream’t about.

Last year Cheryl and I decided that the 2007 St. Pat’s fam would be our last – BUT WE LIED! It was such a success that we have bowed to enormous pressure from many sources in Ireland and have decided to give it one more blast!!

We’ve selected all 5-star hotels (the Dublin accommodation on the last night is being kept as a “surprise” for the moment) for our little jaunt – check them out on their websites. And our Irish office is working on many other “surprises” that will be included in the final program.

I hope you can join Cheryl and I on our 17th consecutive trip. We will take spouses/companions at the same cost providing space is available. However, the trip will be strictly limited to 30 guests.

Contact Brian Mundy at www.iqotc.com

Using Flickr Photos as a Social Network

How to use Flickr
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLo4355l6QE

There’s a lot of good reasons to use an online photo service. Online photo services make it easy to save and organize your photos for later. Have you ever tried to find a picture from your last trip and had no idea where it could be? Ever had your hard drive crash and were not able to recover anything on it? I have, and it’s not fun.

Sharing your Photos
Sharing your photos online is a lot easier and faster than emailing your photos to all your friends and family. And your friends and family can also keep up with your new pics.

Networking your photos
This maybe a little extreme: I just came back from Barbados and saw about 20 properties, and yes I have plenty more to go. Some unique features: These pictures are sized to fit on any area of a web site, each picture has a description, and are copy righted as creative commons so they can not be resold, anyone can use them, and there must be a reference that I am the photographer.

I liked Club Med so much I set up a Club Med Group on Flickr where others could share their vacation photos as well. What a great way to see other Club Med locations than through the eyes or photos of others that have been there. And if there are more questions there is a place to start a discussion or ask questions.

Thunderbird email

Managing you email

After a long weekend we all like to brag with our coworkers about how
many emails end up in our inbox. Yes spam is part of our online society.

After receiving 400+ emails after one weekend I decided it was time to
change things.

I started use Mozilla’s Suite and sometimes I would test Thunderbird
as my email program, and it’s not that much different than Mozilla Suite,
and both are great for:

  • Organizing folders and files
  • Managing (spam) junk email

Managing junk email

Mozilla suites Junk mail controls.
Mozilla Suites & Thunderbird offer easy to use junk email controls
with advanced security features.

From the main menu bar click on tools and click on Junk
Mail controls
.

This image on the left is how I set my controls.

The controls are fairly simple:

  • If the sender is in my address book then they will not be listed as
    junk.
  • If the email is considered to be junk then it goes to the junk email
    folder and will be deleted after 14 days (Default).
  • Thunderbird will also sanitize any html from any scripting included
    in the email.
  • To mark or un-mark an email as junk: In the email list there will be
    an icon on the email row that can be turned on or off.

When you first start Mozilla or Thunderbird mail
expect about a 2 week learning curve. That’s right the junk mail controls
will learn what you consider junk by an algorithm that looks at the sender,
subject and the body of the message.

You may want to wait until you address book is a
certain size before you turn on the controls.

Managing folders

Mozilla & Thunderbird make it simple to add and direct incoming emails
to spicific folders. Why create folders? Simple: When dealing with groups
or subjects, it’s easier to follow and find information.

There is also a search feature that I use several times a week. This
saves lots of time.

Security features

Among the new security features in Thunderbird 1.5 are Kerberos
authentication and integration with server-side spam filtering. There
is also a built-in phishing detector to help protect you against e-mail
scams, providing an “extra line of defense” in preventing users from getting
caught up in e-mail identity-theft and information-theft scams.

Some of the new improvements in Thunderbird include automatic spelling
checking as the user types a message and auto saving as drafts. You can
also receive rss feeds as email messages.

June 11, 2006: Thunderbird is listed on PC World’s Best 100 Products
for 2006.

Know after a long (3 or 4 day) weekend there maybe 400+ emails coming
in, but there are only about 5 spam emails in my inbox.

Port City Java

Port City Java

Came into Greenville SC a little early and went to Port City Java for a cup of coffee and to get a little work done online. There were already several people working on their laptops. The connection was good and never had a problem with speed or being kicked off.

1941 Woodruff Rd.
Greenville, SC 29607
864.289.9890
www.portcityjava.com

Build your own PC

Build your own PC

Why build my own computer?
Why not buy my next computer again? My next computer will be a work-horse computer. I'm in the process of doing more work from home and need a computer that can handle some large programs that eat up the memory and processor time. I also want to be able to exchange parts as they become out dated or go bad with out replacing the whole computer.

With a brand name upgrading would be limited to buying a new computer and parts may be limited to the brand and I want more choices.These are my main interests: price, warranties, support.Coming in January MicroCenter will have 2 workshops BYOPC Build your own PC January 5th, 12th and the 19th (Powers Ferry Atlanta).

This will be an all day event broken up into 2 sessions.

The first session will start at 11 am and will include the motherboard, CPU, memory and case.

The second session (afternoon) will cover the video card, hard drive and optical drive.

more info

rsvp at your local MicroCenter

Hope to see you there

Adrian Schjetnan

Adrian Schjetnan
Director of Sales

Please contact me when you send a client to us. I will see that they receive a special gift from you.

Crowne Plaza
Blvd. SanJose s/n Seccion Hotelera 1 Fonatur
San Jose del Cobo, B.C.S, Mexico C.P. 23400

52 (624) 142 9292 /770 Office
52 (624) 142 9299 Fax

www.cploscabos.com/