Wifi.

I do not think there is any excuse in this day and age not to have Wifi in hotels and restaurants . Have been to many hotels where they have Wifi designated zones which was OK a couple of years ago but not now. When practically everybody has some sort of gadget or laptop that they do not want to be dictated to as to where they can sit or not to use it. I was even in a hotel in Luxembourg a few months ago where they had no Wifi connection at all! Needless to say I will not be going there again!
Same story should be for restaurants and coffee bars. Now I know its not terribly polite to be in company and surf the web but people do still go out to eat on their own and am sure they would welcome the distraction, I know I would. How long before people start making this a factor when they are deciding where to eat? Its not as if it costs a huge amount of money either, its a question of providing an extra service to your clients.
Whilst in Madrid last month I found myself in Starbucks and even their policy surprised me. Not only did I have to jump through hoops to find out the wifi code ( given in ticket form at the cash register if you're interested) but after 40 minutes this was cut off and I wasn't encouraged to stay any longer! Strange but true!
My message to anybody involved in the service industry is to get on board the technology boat. It might not lose you business today but you can bet your life it will tomorrow.

Video star!

I am a video star! Ok, maybe I should quantify that a bit, shopintheknow and I have started filming short promotional videos for the residential portfolio of Orco property Group. So far we have done about 4 but it's great fun and has been well received by our fans ( ok our employees).
We do not have some big plan or a script we just point and shoot. I do all the talking as I can talk for hours about real estate with no encouragement at all and Jason does the shooting as he does not have ADD and by and large the camera stays in the right spot without spinning on it's axis like something from the Exocist!
Prior to the recession we would have paid an agency several thousand Euros to do this type of thing , plus a huge fee for the star of the film and the production planning for it would have run for hours if not days. Once filmed there would have been at least another weeks work editing and tweeking it and photoshopping the stars spot out of the centre of his head. Why, what were we all thinking? From start to finish our process takes us maximum of one hour and that includes the obligatory stop at Starbucks to pick up coffee prior to shooting! Now I do not think we will be collecting an Oscar any time soon for our filming skills and so far Hollywood have not come knocking on my front door begging me to star in their next film as George Clooneys love interest but we got the job done with minimal cost and pain. More importantly it's out there in the big bad Internet world just waiting to be picked up by some discerning property investor.
My advice to any of you working for companies who are still throwing the big bucks out there to some agency is to stand up and be counted. Say " I can do this" grab your camera and a colleague and go out there and do it! What's the worst that could happen?
To see the fruits of our efforts check out Orcoworld on Facebook.