To hell with it...let's wait for the party
Last week we discovered - and had the nod from officials - that delays to the long-awaited launch of TravelMail were finally over and users would be able to be see the site on May 9.
The excitement at Travolution Towers on Wednesday morning was almost too much to bear, such has been our level of interest in what is essentially a huge online travel project for one of the biggest newspaper groups in the UK.
But, alas, we were greeted with a holding page - "will launch in Spring 2007" - after we eagerly typed in the URL.
"I suppose it's better than the old re-direct to ThisIsTravel.co.uk," someone muttered as they trudged off to make a cup of tea.
Those wags at the Daily Mail certainly know how to keep an audience waiting - another six days, in fact.
According to someone at the PR company - our collection of usually reliable sources were mysteriously tight lipped yesterday, so we had to go elsewhere - the site will now be unveiled on Tuesday 15 May, to coincide with the glitzy launch party in London.
Er, okay...
"It is not a delay," we were informed quickly. Let's hope not...
UPDATE: Exclusive but unwanted access and screen shots
Kevin May, editor, Travolution
Technorati tags: daily mail associated newspapers travel portal travelmail
7 comments:
I hope that the actual launched site looks better than the holding page too! :)
Hey, delays happen in technology projects. I've had lots of experience of that happening, believe me.
Let's hope it is worth the wait. Personally I'd rather a site worked really well than looked fabulous and was rubbish but having taken a look at the site I take darren's point!
Darren/Paul: It's only a holding page, remember.
If you look at the efforts of the rest of the DMGT group you would expect there to be similar high standards.
Guys...forget the look and feel....justy worry about can it generate the traffic!
As a travel advertiser we work closely with the likes of Teletext, Travelsupermarket and to a lesser extent Cheapflights. Like all other advertisers we need effective travel portals that generate leads in order to provide better conversions than the ever increasing expense of Google or better enviroments where you can actually be compared with people offering real prices rather than thousands of made up prices that simpley do not exist in reaslity i.e. Teletext.
So all i can say is sod the party....bring on the leads!
And yes that does mena I'm intersted in being contacted for advertising MR Travel Mail.
steve.endacott@onholidaygroup.com
Is this a monumental cock up or just clever Viral Marketing. Ive already set this as a task to my team and they are looking worried as the winner gets a Mars Bar !!
Anthony Cruise365.com
I suspect it is not a piece of clever viral marketing - although i would fall short of saying it is a cock-up.
Rest assured, Associated was not particularly happy with us finding out this morning.
They asked us for the name of our source (come on, guys, you're a newspaper publisher!!) and then pretty much asked us to not post the screen grabs, "because we want to make a big splash of at the launch".
Steve: I can see the headline in travel weekly already. "Endecott in 'sod the party' shocker".
:-)
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