Simon Pardoe - Marketing & Business Development

September is the month that my client, The Healthy Holiday Company, finalises its dates, prices and destinations for the following year.  As always, we like to add one or two new destinations – which are visited earlier in the year and discussions commenced – whilst also negotiating new agreements with the existing venues.  My role is to negotiate the agreements on behalf of THHC and work with the team to create a pricing structure that we think will be attractive to the market.

This year has had the added (but pleasant) complication in that the two new brands that THHC launched in 2010 – fitscape fitness holidays and destination yoga – have both proved very successful and we wish to double the amount of weeks we offer for both brands in 2011.  So, we’ll be adding three new venues and dropping one, meaning that there will be 9 venues for our guests to choose from next year:  France, Spain, Morocco (x 2), Italy (x 3), Greece and India.  And, across all venues, a total of 44 weeks to choose from – bringing us closer to our objective of offering 52 weeks in 2012.

It’s going to be a busy couple of weeks concluding all the details, but we’re confident we’ll be able to publish all our 2011 dates by the end of the month.

in:spa (owned and operated by my client: The Healthy Holiday Company) has teamed up with BPP, Europe’s leading provider of professional education, to launch a new training programme called Healthy Leadership.  The Consultancy was responsible for leading the planning and negotiation of the partnership.

The email announcing this new training opportunity for professionals is being despatched tomorrow (see below) and links through to a specially created micro-website for further information.  To view, please click here

Introducing ‘Healthy Leadership’

The Athenaeum Hotel, London | 22-25 October or 26-29 November 2010

We’re delighted to announce the perfect solution for busy professionals that can’t afford to take too much time from their hectic work schedule to achieve their training requirements – a luxury weekend of cutting-edge health and leadership training.

You can obtain 16 hours of training (CPD accredited), while giving your mind and body the overhaul it deserves with our Healthy Leadership weekend at the 5-star Athenaeum Hotel in London, brought to you by BPP Professional Development in partnership with in:spa, the UK’s leading provider of luxury healthy holidays.

For an amazing introductory price of £2,295, you will receive your accommodation, all meals and snacks, 16-hours of Leadership training, with a daily selection of health and relaxation programmes, including fitness training, yoga and massage. The concierge can even organise an optional evening at the theatre for you on Saturday!

If your partner doesn’t want to miss out on a great weekend in London, you can bring them too to enjoy everything except the CPD training for a special additional price of just £195!

For more information visit us at bpphealthyleadership.com, or contact us via e-mail
on healthyleadership@bpp.com

To ensure the best quality training, we are restricting each weekend to just 16 delegates
– so book early to avoid disappointment!

It’s over 10 years since I last went to Amman, Jordan.  From 1996 to 1998 I visited for a few days almost every month as we worked on developing Amman’s first luxury family resort for Middle East Development Corp.  After we had conducted the initial project research and feasibility, the Consultancy went on to provide project development, design, business systems, as well as supporting all aspects of the sales & marketing campaign.  The US$15m venture was opened on 1 July 1998 by the King’s son.   In excess of US$4m in pre-opening membership sales were achieved.

I am delighted to see, from a photograph I was recently sent by a colleague, that the place still looks fabulous.

We launched The Healthy Holiday Company’s ‘white label’ services early in 2010 and our first client – London’s leading yoga studio network – agreed to extend it’s customer offering by introducing yoga holidays.  We have now undertaken 5 holidays on their behalf, all to great customer acclaim.  As a result, the client has recently requested that we increase the number of our white label yoga holidays from 5 in 2010 to 12 in 2011.  Well done to all our team for their hard work in making our first venture so successful!  We look forward to continued success with this, our first white label client.

What is holiday ‘white label’?

It’s a mechanism whereby X Company (with experience in the travel / holiday market) handles all aspects of the travel / holiday business for a third party company that is not in the travel / holiday business but would like to extend it’s customer offering to include this.  So, X Company simply installs a dedicated phone system, online communications and accounting facilities and represents the third party brand as if it were actually them.  To the customer, it looks, feels and sounds just like the company for which X Company are providing the white label service.  If it’s done properly, everyone’s happy!

We’re all looking forward to meeting with Ben Parker, owner of Tongabezi, in early August to review the European marketing strategy and to learn, first hand, about the various new facilities and services that have recently been implemented – and are scheduled to be introduced later this year and next – at Ben’s magical property on the banks of the mighty Zambezi.  As with many of the world’s leading hotels, the global recession has not had too great an impact on business.  Of course, great marketing and an exceptional customer experience make a huge difference too!