I don’t know if I have mentioned this but we are a member of our local Tourism Learning Network which is being facilitated by our friends at Mayday management. The aim of the network is to improve access to learning for small companies like ours and also to help us improve our business in many ways. I personally feel it has been a real benefit and that Mayday has made a great job of a very hard and often unrewarding task.
One of the crucial areas that being a member has helped us is that it has encouraged us to take an outside view of our business which is often hard when you seem to spend your life driving and washing busses! I hate to use a buzz phrase but here goes – “looking outside the box” has in some ways changed the company and is an exercise that I would recommend to all small business owners. I intend to re read a book I read last year called The Art of Possibility by Ben and Rosalind Zander and the gist of this is often that the answer to your problem may lie under your nose if you can look beyond the obvious.
We are currently operating a customer survey in conjunction with The Network and whilst we have done one in the past this one is proving to be very illuminating and whilst I ‘am pleased to say feedback has been generally positive, people do say things on paper that they would never say to your face! One response that particularly hurt was the lady with Christine on Sunday who answered the question “would you recommend Barratt Tours to a friend or family” to which she answered with an emphatic no with “no” other explanation! If by any chance the lady is reading this please drop Chris a line to let her know where we went wrong!
So, as ever, if I’am missing something obvious that will prove popular or a group of you think it might be fun to spend a week doing goodness knows what in Ireland, get in touch and you will find that we are far more broad minded and imaginative than your average tour company!
This week’s music – Forever Delayed – The Manic Street Preachers- A glorious re visit to many forgotten tracks and contains “A design for life” which is surely in my top ten favourite tracks of all time! And it was only Eu4.99 in Galway – what more could you want!
This weeks book – Still on with Ruinair but just starting something juicy – Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs by Irvine Welsh – its early days but shaping up to be great read (if you aren’t easily offended!!) This has inspired me to read Trainspotting as I love the film and never got round to reading it.
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