BBM Blog - 2006 Archives

BUILDING THE BUSINESS

2 Dec 2006

The last 6 weeks have been pretty hectic to say the least. I'm still operating the business part-time  and it's been taking up a lot of my spare time but progress is being made. The Egypt travel side of my business is now fully up and running. The main website is www.redseaexplorer.com and this has links to my Explorer Travel franchise is www.redsea.explorertravel.co.uk I've also had a number of discussions with Maria Munn at Oceanvisions. Maria runs underwater photo courses for people to help them get the most out of underwater photographer using basic cameras. Maria has a very similar theory to business as myself, we both like to provide a good quality service to our customers. We like to offer a personal service which is something the larger companies don't always provide.

The next thing I'm working on is my Russia and Eastern Europe travel and I'll let you know when its up and running, hopefully by the end of the year.

So now it's time to look ahead to 2007. There are other areas of travel I'm looking to build; Sports Travel and Battlefield Tours. Both of these have huge scope for development and it's easy to let ideas run away out of control. I intend to initially market the Sports Travel towards football and specifically England away matches. This ties quite nicely with my Russian travel as on 17th October 2007, England will play Russia in a Euro 2008 qualifier and there is already a lot of interest in this.

At the end of February 2007, I'm going to visit Ypres in Belgium for a couple of days as part of the research for my Battlefield Tours. I'm going to hire a private guide for the first day and then explore the area for myself. I've been doing a lot of background reading about the battles around the area during World War I and it's beyond comprehension what these young men had to go through.

DIVE SHOW 2006

20 Oct 2006

Last Saturday, I flew into Birmingham for the Dive Show 2006 which was being held at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC). It's very simple to get to from BHX airport, you just jump on the free shuttle and it gets you there in a couple of minutes. The plan was to have a good look round to see what was on offer and also meet the people from Emperor Divers. Emperors operate what are considered to be the best dive centres in the Red Sea and I had ask Explorer Travel to make them a preferred supplier (they have since been approved).

I paid my £10.50 entrance fee and made my way to Emperor's stand and had a quick chat with Mark and Larry. Larry is the Assistant Manager and will be my main point of contact with Emperors. We agreed to sit down later in the afternoon after Emperor's seminar and in the meantime, I took the opportunity to look round the show.

There were hundreds of stands from all sorts of companies; equipment suppliers, tour operators, dive centres, dive organisations and conservation groups. The 2 most interesting contacts I made were a Russian company (RuDive Group)who offer a variety of dive packages in the north of Russia. I had a chat with the Managing Director, Dr Mikail Safonov, and I was fairly impressed with what they have to offer.  I can see their dive trips being quite appealing to British divers.

The other important contact was Maria Munn who runs Oceanvisions. She runs courses to help divers improve their underwater photography skills using the most basic cameras. When you see the some of the photos taken by her students, you can't fail to be impressed. Maria runs one days courses in the UK and 7 day workshops down in the Red Sea with Emperor Divers. In recent years, more and more divers are using cameras and I believe Maria has found a great product to market in helping people get better pictures.

In addition, I also picked up some information from some of the places I hope to visit next year. I plan to take the family on holiday to Barbados and Cuba as well as a short liveaboard in Phuket, Thailand en-route to a friends wedding in Australia.

The show was definitely worth visiting and I'll make sure that I attend all future shows.

INTRODUCTION

13 Oct 2006

Welcome to Big Blue Marble Explorer, a franchise of Explorer Travel. My name is Rob Atherton and I own and run the franchise. Initially, it will on a part time basis while I continue my work as an IT contractor but by next summer, I intend to operate the franchise on a full-time basis.

After all the paperwork was agreed and the franchise fee, I attended the 4 day training course at the Highpoint Conference Centre in Leicester at the start of October 2006. So now, I can started selling travel to clients. The general business plan is to specialise in specific areas of travel. There is no limit to the number of specialist areas although these will need to be built up over a period of time.

Initially, I will specialise in 2 areas. The first will be Egypt and the Red Sea. This will be marketed as Red Sea Explorer. The second area will be Russia and will marketed as Rodina Explorer.

In order to keep with the Explorer Travel theme, I want to keep all future specialist travel to this format. In addition, I will also ensure that I get register the .com and .co.uk domain names.

At present, I'm working hard with content for the Red Sea Explorer website and tomorrow, I'm travelling over to the NEC in Birmingham where the Dive Show is being hosted. I'm planning to meet some people from Emperor Divers who operate the Number One dive centres in the Red Sea and they will be a supplier of mine. It's always good to put faces to names. It's the first time I've been to a Dive Show so I'm really looking forward to it.