NYNY Solutions

Yellow and mushy
The peel throws you off balance
Sudden change in life

I have refined the wording somewhat over the years, but the essence is the same and is quite possibly the most condensed, most brilliant and most true of all advice ever given from father to son.

So here it is, my father’s Banana Peel Theory:

‘Most things that will ever happen to you in life, you will come upon as unexpectedly as when slipping on a banana peel, so the best thing to do is to be where there are a hell of a lot of banana peels’

The Swedish version:

‘Det mesta som kommer att hända dig, kommer du att trilla in på ett bananskal på, så den enda plan du egentligen behöver är att se till att vara där det finns en jävla massa bananskal’

Now, my friends, go to where the banana peels lie.

The End.

Let’s face it - Testing scares stakeholders. After all, testing creates accountability. It removes a lot of padding that you can typically rely on in marketing:

“I didn’t know”, “how could we have known”, “no one could have guessed”

Well, perhaps no one could have guessed, but almost everyone could have tested, if they had thought about it, or knew how ….or dared.

So, we take this piece of human nature into account, and deal with it. 

The most typical exampel of all is most likely the company website.

After all, what does your Google Analytics report tell you about what’s right or wrong? Why should you listen to anyone telling you that typically menus should go on the left, and images go on the right? God forbid you should do an eytracking heatmap analysis - to find out that your colorful logo does in fact actually attract the eye more than the 10p black text next to it.

No, really? Fascinating! Now what?

Compare the above happy, safe environment where nothing is really wrong and nothing is really right, to:

Creating version A and version B of your site, then watch a random population of new visitors experience these, each visitor most likely oblivious to the existance of the other version. 

Now we find that version B does in fact ceteris paribus generate twice as much revenue as version A.

Let’s say you are the designer/champion of version A. This isn’t a nice, padded environment you are facing. It’s a situation where you are proven brutally wrong.

But, it’s also a situation where we’ve just found out that version B might earn your company enough money to give you a raise next year, and you’ve just been part of something hugely valuable that will help you create much better things next time.

Saying that your version stinks is also perhaps not true, perhaps it was a great result - only B was even better. Perhaps the foundation of your version A, was crucial to coming up with  B. Perhaps you shouldn’t be burned at the stake after all?

Ideally, of course, you were the one ushering in this process in the company, so you worked on both versions, always communicating openly to your colleagues that no one can really tell what’s best before it’s tested.

Which is, of course, the truth.

This story about insomniac Emirates pilots just goes to show that the glass is always half empty for some.

Across a night sky
Giant planes fly silently
Pilots need coffee

Skies grow darker still
Money presses gearing up
Gold is always gold

Dohop.com  - the flight search engine that not only displays search results from multiple vendors, but actually combines flights in a gadzillion ways to come up with the best and the cheapes option for you - released a major update a couple of days back.

It’s now possible to pick airports from an interactive map, plus results seem to have more fare info, with booking options from both travel agencies and airline websites.

I think by now it’s safe to assume that the rumours about Google buying Expedia, were indeed not true.

Big surprise. Not.

Drive & stay vacations are grossly overlooked within the travel industry. 

It can’t be because the industry is too small or that there’s no money in it (because it’s huge and still has decent margins left even for aggregators) . It can’t be because there are no technological challenges or potential for building neat sites (it’s probably right up there with the average fly&stay holiday in terms of booking complexity and online proliferation).

No, my $0.02 is the reason drive&stay keeps flying below radar is the growth vector doesn’t look like that of an OTA, where you can just aggregate commoditized stuff and grab traffic from everywhere. This is in stark contrast to the drive&stay market, where inventory is completely fragmented, and aggregators need to go out and get inventory face to face with camp-sites, vacation facilities, mom-n-pop type operations.

Now the key aggregators already hoarding prime inventory like fierce dragons are mostly kind of old-school, but not stupid, so they’re adapting step by step to online operations, a ballpark estimate is about 50-50 online/call-center.

More importantly, my guess is the drive & stay market is going to be hit like everything else by the economic down-turn, but will gain market share on the shrinking market, as self-drive holidays can be easily adjusted to fit budget, and although gas for the car might be more expensive, cost of flying is being hit even harder.

Dohop.com has released a new version of their flight search engine - or flight planner as they call it. Graphic makeovers include an innovative map search and more information about each search result and booking options.

 But the cool thing about www.dohop.com is the search engine will combine results from hundreds of sources and create unique itineraries, specifically tailored for your trip. If you are flying London-Berlin, this won’t mean much, but if you’re intent on going from one less frequently served airport to another, really far away - dohop will potentially amaze you.

Not only do they come up with alternative routes and combine one way tickets from different carriers, they also find and include low-cost carrier flights in the equation. This is where savings on fares can be really interesting.