I then had a chance to visit the offices of Crispin Porter Bogusky where my friend Darin Brown is the managing director for their European offices. He and the team were hard at work on a pitch so it was extra fun to see the creative energy flowing around various white boards and storyboards for different ideas.
More English Tea-time with buuteeq’s partner for Africa region properties, Classic Representation, which provides marketing services to luxury and exotic lodges in Africa (as an example, the Kurland Lodge). Alicia and Suzanne were lovely hosts at the epic “english tea lounge” The Wolseley where I had my first dish of Kedgeree (rice with smoked fish and eggs, apparently devised by Englishmen on tour of duty in India sometime back in colonial history). Alicia is rapidly becoming a buuteeq Cloud DMS domain expert and i’m excited to see what we can do together to delight African properties in the year ahead.
Next up and of great fun for me was a visit to one of the best luxury boutique OTAs in the industry, Mr. and Mrs. Smiths, who have a remarkably similar office layout complete with projected realtime dashboard showing traffic/bookings/etc. conversions on the “big wall”. I’m a huge admirer of Mr. and Mrs. Smiths, both for their great online content and curated list of amazing properties around the world, and as a consumer, as an inspirational list of eventual travel destinations I hope to visit!
And rounding out my visit I had a chance to meet Yunna, Mark (pictured below), and Peter at Evolution Distribution which has been integrating buuteeq’s Cloud DMS with their Evolution CRS product and other marketing services from parent company Great Hotel of the World.
Thanks everyone for hosting me and the lively conversations at the tea-room or pub (it seems that everything happens in London at one or the other?)
About Forest Key
ceo and co-founder of buuteeq. I love technology and travel, buuteeq is a convenient way for me to combine those each and every day of the year.
