Your Own UK Travel Agency for £29

[Traveleze]

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Hi there,

Pic'n'Mix Holidays is a fantastic new UK travel affiliate program. It's a great way for you, your friends and family to save on holidays and flights and other travel services. Pic'n'Mix your own travel site and make money from it.

Our opportunity is ideal for: club owners, scouts, football teams, charity groups, friends, family, teams, schools, colleages, groups, members, individuals, couples etc

As we have just launched Pic'n'Mix Holidays, We're really wondering what the best practice is for getting our company known, Any hints/tips/suggestions greatly received.

Kind Regards
Steve Richards
www.picnmixholidays.co.uk

[angelabx]

Welcome to the forum Steve.

Perhaps one post would have been sufficient - making 3 identical posts could make you appear as a spammer.

So are you actually part of DTS/Holiday.co.uk/Holiday Express or are you just an affiliate of theirs?

Your offering looks very interesting and nicely packaged.

We may be interested in giving it a go.

[stevey]

What are the legal issues on this? Would we need to register with ABTA or anybody else, obtain licences, etc?

Can you use an existing .com or do we need to use one of your .co.uk names?

Cheers,

stevey

[stevey]

Just noticed that you have google search results on your travel info pages (links on bottom of example site). Would we earn commission share on these clicks? Seems a bit unfair if not.

stevey

[Chris Clarkson]

What are the legal issues on this? Would we need to register with ABTA or anybody else, obtain licences, etc?

All sales are carried out through holiday express, as Angela pointed out.

"Ticket sales are handled by Holiday Express (ABTA No. E8585) retail agents for ATOL holders."


Basically what you are offering for £29 is a site containing the DTS feed in iframes?

Chris

[angelabx]

You're right Chris - looks quite nice though. Good idea.

Obviously everybody they sign up needs a new tracking code/tel no from DTS so they must be either part of DTS or working very closely with them.

[stevey]

It'd be nice to know exactly what the relationship with the DTS is?

Thanks,

stevey

[Traveleze]

Hi all,
Firstly thanks for the interest in our offering, I only posted the thread a few hours ago - wow, [sorry angela for the multiple listing]

Pic'n'Mix Holidays are working closely with DTS to provide a travel solution for their white label product. Having spent the last 4 years personally working directly with Comtec themselves for The Global Travel Group, Pic'n'Mix Holidays was born earlier this year and since reccently joining forces so to speak with DTS our main aim is to provide a management free travel web site.

At my time at The Global Travel Group, the travel sites I have created have won numerous awards in the travel industry. 2005 Travel Industry Golden Globe Award Winners for Innovation: E-Commerce Solutions & 2005 Achievement Wales Business Award Winners: E-Commerce Solutions.

It has been Pic'n'Mix Holidays' sole goal since joining DTS to provide a solution that is not only in a league of it's own in terms of design and functionality but also at an incredibly low cost.

Thanks to Chris as well for answering stevey's question... Your travel agency is backed by Holiday Express who is a fully ABTA bonded travel agency (ABTA No. E8585). For more details on this please see http://www.traveleze.co.uk/atol.htm

In answer to your question Chris... your pretty much spot on. We do offer quite a package though with our unique bolt on's, free hosting, free domain name registration & much more.

Stevey, Full FTP details will be given to your site, this allows you to personally change the account for the google search pages to your own account...

It is preferable also to use your own domains if you have them, Although Pic'n'Mix Holidays will register a .co.uk domain name free for you, this would remain our property should you no longer hold an active account with us. This allows most of our affiliate to join us with out then having to buy a .co.uk domain etc.

For more details on our tracking code and unique telephone numbers for your travel site please have a look at our Partnership Proposal here... http://www.picnmixholidays.com/partner_proposal

Hope this helps... any questions are most welcome

Kind Regards
Steve R
www.picnmixholidays.co.uk

[angelabx]

If we have our own domains and just use forwarding I'd guess this wouldn't be too effective for any SEO that we do. Therefore having a domain purely hosted with you would probably be the best.

I'd always feel a little nervous if I picked a domain and you registered it in you name ...... I then spent a fortune promoting it and made it successful ...... the site is never mine and in theory you could just take it off me and terminate our contract.

I've had a couple of experiences of people I work/partner with 'stabbing me in the back' so I naturally tread carefully and look out for such weaknesses.

I really like what you're offering - just need to think very carefully about the way to set it up.

Could you not host the domain but actually register it in the name of your affiliate?

[Azam.net]

Add ons can make it all expensive compared to free affiliate programs. Is that £20 every time you change the banners, or you pay it once and can change banners as many times as you like?

I know profit margins are not huge in some parts of this sector, but 2.5% on travel insurance and car hire doesn't compare very well with free-to-join affiliate programs which can pay up to ten times more.

Good luck - as this is an innovative service. Hope it succeeds.

[Traveleze]

Hi All,

Firstly, I totally sympathise with you Angela as to your concerns on building a business on a domain you don't own.

To help our affiliates out in the initial setup of their travel agency, we do register a domain for our affiliates. This helps keep their costs down. We do always suggest using your own domains.

In such a case of you wanting to keep the domain name for the business you build, it would be viable for you to purchase this domain and we simply host it, therefore all ownership belongs to you. This would incur a .co.uk charge to you though depending where you purchased the .co.uk name (Pic'n'Mix Holidays would still register you a .co.uk as this included with our reg fee)

Most of our agents do use their own domains, and have a 2nd domain registered by us as an additional measure. At least should they wish to move/cancel etc, they take ownership of the name with name.

It's important to note that our business structure is based on a mutual working relationship and Pic'n'Mix Holidays will never actively take ownership of your domain should there be a sizable business that has been accumlated on this domain.

Pic'n'Mix Holidays have competitively matched DTS's commission structure @ 2.5%, I think opodo offer 2%... (please do not quote me on this)...

In regard to changing banners on your site, this would be a one off fee, allowing you to change them as often as you like, Our advertising partners help with the subsidised offering for Pic'n'mix Holidays by opting out of our banners and using your own unfortunately carries the "one of fee".

Hope this helps.

Kind Regards
Steve Richards
www.picnmixholidays.co.uk

[lowndsy]

If the package includes full ftp access is there anything to stop me logging in and making the odd change to the template? For example - I have a nice arrangement with one of the airport parking merchants who provide me with a creative / enquiry form that noone else has - could I hack that into your site?

[Itchy]

Although Pic'n'Mix Holidays will register a .co.uk domain name free for you,
this would remain our property should you no longer hold an active account with us.

Erm you having a laugh aint ya whats to stop say.....

someone joins you, so you buy them for free blahblah.co.uk that site does very well ... you kick the affiliate off the programme for say not putting sugar in his tea ..... which leaves you with a very usefull domain name with built up traffic.

Yes i know my example is abit extreme ( getting booted off for no sugar - milk yes) but its still a big possability isnt it?

doh!! i see someone else already said it great minds think alike

[Traveleze]

Hi There,

Just to clarify our positon with our free .co.uk domain name offer...

Our terms and conditions and my previous posts may have sounded harsher than our company gesture may sound. Please accept my apology if I have misled you.

It's never been in Pic'n'Mix Holidays interest to own your company domain, Our strong and fully pledged belief is that if you have built the reputation of the domain and put the effort in achieving its current demand, we would obviously class this as your domain and FULL ownership of the domain would then become yours.

Our Free .co.uk domain name offering is a helping hand to those affiliates that are put off by the extra cost of buying a domain name. ONLY in the circumstance of the domain becoming redundant and no longer in use by the affiliate would we then accept full ownership of the domain. If the affiliate does take our free domain name offer, and the domain gains publicity etc, we would only be to happy to transfer ownership to yourselves wether or not you still held an active account with us or not. It's your hard work, In our eyes, we would gladly sign over ownership.

We would always recommend you have your own domain name, but these need to be pointed to our DNS settings. (and do carry that extra cost in having to buy one) if you already have one to use even better!.

With our sites we offer FULL FTP details, to keep our offering low we have strategic advertising partners that help subsidise our offering, all we ask that should you wish to remove these banners in favour of your own, or simply to remove them, is a small one off fee to help with our subsidising. (please see Bolt On's)

With full access to your site, yes you can add your own preferred merchants. Although its important to note that you can only add extra functionality to your site as long as none of our current functionality is removed. If we take traveleze.co.uk for example they have a merchant account set up with Cheap4Ferries that they have integrated into their site, they have also taken our Travel Extra's option too, earning commission on nearly everything In regard to the above, their would be nothing stopping you creating your own page using our template featuring your additional merchants, ie, air port parking, airlines, car hire etc. Although some of these are available as a bolt on to your travel agency - please see our bolt on section here for more details... http://www.picnmixholidays.com/partner_proposal.

Hope the above helps.

Kind Regards
Steve
www.picnmixholidays.co.uk

[angelabx]

Can I clarify ....

We would be free to add our own links to merchants with their own affiliate programmes even if they were tour operators featured in the Comtec Results?

ie. There is absolutely no restriction on who we can promote on the site.

Obviously we'd pay the £20 fee for this functionality.

Useful thread by-the-way. Thanks Steve. I'm sure this sort of open discussion will land you more affiliate partners. I can feel the trust building