Thank you for joining us yesterday at the Long Acre for a few drinks and to chat about a topic that everyone loves – travel. It was really nice meeting everyone and thank you for the opportunity to share with you a little bit about the launch of Hotwire.com in the UK. As you might remember from yesterday, we’ve given LBM on exclusive on our survey about the booking habits of UK holidaymakers. For those of you who didn’t have a pen or a smartphone handy, below are a few highlights from the survey of 2000 adults which will be released next week.
Survey results
The survey revealed that nearly two thirds (58%) of Brits are taking more or the same number of holidays as they were last year. However, more are taking shorter breaks instead of one main long holiday and look for bargains once they have decided on the location.
Also, we are hunting for bargain holidays but will not compromise on the destination. 45% of people think of their holiday destination first, and then search for the best price to get there; compared to only 13% of consumers, who have a set price in mind, then look for the best holiday deal to that destination.
When booking hotel accommodation, people considered location (50%) and price (31%) as the most important factors. 49% of people considered themselves to be ‘planners’, booking their hotel two to four weeks in advance while almost a fifth (18%) of the population considered themselves to be ‘last-minute deal seekers’ booking one to five days before they travel. Interestingly, when we asked you, the LBM bloggers, the same question, the results were nearly identical (50% of you are planners and 19% are last-minute deal seekers). The LBM bloggers are clearly representative of the general UK holiday maker J
Congratulations!
Congratulations to the winners of the Hotwire competition who told their craziest travel story. You can read the winning stories from Shimelle Laine and Jorgen Sundberg on the London Bloggers website. Shimelle saved money by renting a broom cupboard and Jorgen ended up staying behind a gypsy camp in Bosnia. Jorgen also shared details of his charity project Blog 4 Girls which might be also worth checking out.
Keep in touch
Do let us know if you would like to be invited to future events, get updates or just need a list of the best deals or any other information on travel trends and savings. Just email us at hotwireUK@atomicpr.com.
Are you in one of the photos
We’ve posted a few photos from the event on our Flickr page.
This might perhaps be the most belated blog posts I’ve written in some time, but what the hell, it’s worth the effort. If for nothing else than to thank the guys at Best Buy again for bringing their show to the last London Bloggers Meetup.
For some reason I wasn’t entirely sure how everyone would take to me bringing an electronics retailer to the meetup, but it seemed like everyone was genuinely interested in what Paul (Best Buy UK boss) had to say. Maybe it’s because they’re taking a very customer focussed approach to retailing, which if you think about Curry’s, PC world etc, it’s fairly clear they don’t. Or maybe because they actually know what they’re talking about.
I was once talking to a salesman in Curry’s when trying to buy a camera. I was comparing two brands and asked him for his opinion on the two cameras, the answer went something like:
it’s just down personal brand preference. Like with cars, some poeple prefer BMW, others Mercedes, they’re both the same really.
Needless to say I didn’t buy the camera. I’m pretty confident I wouldn’t get the same experience at Best Buy.
Over the years I’ve been running LBM, we’ve had some pretty cool prizes given away: big screen TVs, trips over London in an airship, weekends away in Amsterdam. But this was the first time we’ve had something signed by Dr Dre. And it has to be said, Mauricio looked like the cat that got the cream when he drew the winning prize – a set of Monster Beats headphones. Presumably you’ve road tested those headphones by now Mauricio..? Any good?
Now I think about it, perhaps people were pleased with Best Buy too because of the seemingly endless supply of Bon Jovi tickets given away. I think I was one of the few people to have not walked away with a pair of tickets, but then I guess I was drawing the lucky winners.
Of course, the night wouldn’t have been the same without Tom Tired of London Tired of Life and his cracking presentation on politics and blogging. Who else would have shared the fact that John Prescot’s manhood is the size of a chipolata was first broken as a story on a blog. Can I say that now he is a Baron..?
In case you want to catch-up on any of the polticial blogs Tom talked about, here’s a link to them all.
Guido Fawkes – http://www.order-order.com/
Iain Dale – http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/
Conservative Home - http://conservativehome.blogs.com/
Spectator Coffee House – http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/
Paul Waugh - http://waugh.standard.co.uk/
Tom, thanks again for a hugely entertaining presentation. I always like to have regular LBM’ers as speakers and if anyone else fancies taking the stage, please drop me a line. It’s not as daunting as you might think and it’s pretty much always a friendly crowd – unless you are a brand coming to sell something.
The other news that night was that regular LBM’er and entrepreneur Navin found out his Love@Tube iPhone app was approved by Apple that very night. Congrats Navin.
If you are single and looking for love, check out his app in the App store now.
Well that’s it. Look forward to seeing you all again on July 14th for the next edition of the London Bloggers Meetup.
It’s 8 days now until the next meetup and we have a completely full house . I don’t know whether this has anything to do with the support from our generous sponsors Smirnoff, or just because the last few socials really have been pretty great… either way suits me, but I have to say I’m particularly looking forward to the next event. We have a waiting list by the way, so if you can no longer make it along, please let me know or release your place on meetup. There are others waiting in the wings to join us.
Smirnoff are hosting us in the bar of parent company Diageo and have promised to give everyone a cocktail making lesson, along with designing a custom cocktail for everyone’s blog. Something I’m sure every discerning blogger would be delighted with. Because of the venue there will also be a strict guest list on the door and as they say: “if you’re name’s not down, you’re not coming in!”
Personally I’m looking forward to trying one of their famous Moscow Mules…
Mosco Mule on YouTube
I’ve just added a video and audio commenting plugin to the blog which I’m going to trial for a short while. So please everyone, give it a road test so that I can see how well it works.
Along with that I’ve created a FriendFeed for the London Bloggers community where I’ll be publishing your tweets – let me know if you’d like to be included (@Annie Mole – I’ve added you just to test it out, hope you’re ok with that..? )
I’m hoping to setup another competition for this month too, so keep checking back for news on that.
See you all on the 30th.
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