Category: business advice

Incurious George and the cult of managerialism

The BBC’s scandals illustrate how management layers diffuse responsibility in modern organisations

“Do you not read papers?” Thundered the BBC’s John Humphrys to the corporation’s Director General during an interview over the broadcaster’s latest scandal.

That exchange was one of the final straws for the hapless George Entwhistle’s 54 day leadership of the British Broadcasting Corporation where the Jimmy Savile scandal had seen him labelled as ‘Incurious George’ for his failure to ask basic questions of his subordinates.

Humphry’s emphasised this when discussing the Newsnight program’s advance notice of the allegations they were going make;

You have a staff, but you have an enormous staff of people who are reporting into you on all sorts of things – they didn’t see this tweet that was going to set the world on fire?

A lack of staff certainly isn’t the BBC’s problem, the organisation’s chairman Chris Patten quipped after Entwhistle’s resignation that the broadcaster has more managers than the Chinese Communist Party.

George Entwhistle’s failure to ask his legion of managers and their failure to keep the boss informed is symptomatic of modern management where layers of bureaucracy are used to diffuse responsibility.

In every corporate scandal over the last two decades we find the people who were paid well to hold ‘responsible’ positions claimed they weren’t told about the nefarious deeds or negligence of their underlings.

Shareholders suffer massive losses, taxpayers bail out floundering businesses and yet senior executives and board members happily waddle along blissfully content as long as the money keeps rolling in.

If it were just private enterprise affected by this managerialism then it could be argued that the free market will fix the problem. Unfortunately the public sector is equally affected.

Managerialism infects the public service as we see with the BBC and it’s political masters  and the results are hospital patients die, wards of the state abused, known swindlers rob old ladies and agencies continually fail to deliver the services they are charged to deliver.

Again the layers of management diffuse responsibility; the Minister, the Director-General and the ranks of Directors with claims to the executive toilet suite’s keys are insulated from the inconvenience of actually being responsible for doing the job they are paid to do.

Managerialism and incuriousity are fine bedfellows, in many ways Incurious George Entwhistle is the management icon of our times.

Social media’s free ride comes to an end

Facebook’s Sponsored Stories have ended the free ride for businesses on social media services and now companies are looking at alternatives

One of the mystifying things about the ways businesses use social media is the willingness of companies – big and small – to give their customer lists away to social media sites.

The best example of this is Facebook, when your customers like you or comment on a post they are added to the service’s database. Facebook gets to ‘own’ your customers and generally Facebook gets to know your customers better than you do.

With the arrival of Sponsored Stories on Facebook we see the next step which monetizing their business functions. Now when a business puts a post up on Facebook, it only appears in 15% of their followers’ feeds. To get to the rest of them a business has to buy a sponsored story.

Not only has Facebook taken ownership of thousands of businesses’ customers, it now charges those business to talk to their own clients.

Should the business decide not to pay for sponsored stories then they find traffic from Facebook drops off. Some businesses report traffic dropping from 30,000 views a day to 5,000.

To counter this one website stumped up the money for a sponsored story that advises their Facebook fans to follow them on Twitter and Google+ instead.

Facebook’s move on this isn’t surprising as they desperately search for revenue streams to justify their huge stockmarket valuation.

What also isn’t surprising is that the free ride for businesses on social media platforms is over.

All too often we’ve heard marketing gurus tell us Facebook and other social media services were free advertising channels.

That view overlooked the time and patience required for executing an effective social media campaign along with the reality that social media services were only free for as long as the investors underwriting the enterprise were prepared to accept losses.

We understand that advertising on TV, radio or print costs money and now we’re having to accept that social media marketing costs as well.

How well Facebook goes with sponsored stories remains to be seen, but the message for businesses is clear – the social media free lunch is well and truly over.

Beware the business trolls

Trolls are as likely to hide in a business’ accounts receivable file as they are on a Facebook page

“A psychopath will enter everyone’s lives at one time. When yours arrives, your job is to get them out of your life as quickly as possible.”

That little gem was handed down to me before the internet gave everyone a global megaphone to entertain themselves with. Today it’s likely a dozen psychopaths a week could enter your life through the web or social media.

One of the manifestations of this ability for anyone to post to the web regardless of merit or sanity has given rise to the phenomenon of “trolling”, of which there has been much recent media attention.

At its most basic, trolling is about getting attention. The troll hopes to get a reaction from something outrageous they’ve said or done. In that respect they aren’t too different to radio talk back hosts or SmartCompany editors.

Business has its own types of trolls: the ‘squeaky wheel’ who hopes that by making a complete pain of themselves you’ll succumb to their unreasonable demands; the perennial tyre kicker who wastes your sales staff’s time; or the late payer who enjoys toying with you and your accounts people but has no intention of ever paying the bill.

The effects of these business trolls can be just as debilitating as an online troll, with the added bonus that they distract you and your employees from getting work done.

Sometimes the business owner makes the mistake of taking things personally. This often happens when a bad debtor upsets us so much we make it our life mission to get what we deserve to be paid.

Hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars later we surrender and accept we were never really going to get that relatively trivial sum.

The worst of all the business trolls is the recreational debtor. These business psychopaths take delight in ringing up debts they have no intention of paying and then treating your attempts to get the money back as a type of game where they will thoroughly mess with your mind.

These are the people to get out of your life as quickly as possible. It could be writing off the debt, giving them the refund or just kicking them out of the store.

So beware of the business trolls, they are as likely to appear in your outstandings file as on your Facebook page.

Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter Seven: Connecting to Asian Markets

How can Australia improve its business, trade and government links with Asian countries?

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

The seventh chapter of Australia in the Asian Century looks at how the country’s businesses and governments can engage with markets in Asia. In some ways this is the most effective chapter of the report.

At the beginning of the chapter introduction points out that Asia offers bigger markets than Australia and says “Australian businesses need to build on their existing advantages by developing new capabilities and approaches as they become fully part of the region.”

This is true, but the Chapter never really identifies what Australia business’ existing advantages really are and again this is a weakness in the report.

National objective 17. Australia’s businesses will be recognised globally for their excellence and ability to operate successfully in Asian markets.

How this comes about is difficult to say, and what governments can actually do to help businesses be recognised globally isn’t really identified.

The CPA case study is notable for illustrating the number of Australian expats working in Asia. In many ways these people are the wasted talents that should have been cultivated by domestic businesses through the 1990s and 2000s.

Saying that businesses need to be part of the global supply chain is a statement of the obvious and Chapter 7.3 does discuss the importance of efficient ports, fast customs procedures and reduced barriers to trade. This ties into National Objective 18a.

National objective 18a.The Australian economy will be more open and integrated with Asia, through efforts to improve our domestic arrangements. The flow of goods, services, capital, ideas and people will be easier.

  • Australia’s trade links with Asia will be at least one-third of GDP by 2025, up from one-quarter in 2011.

It’s difficult to argue with this objective, although one wonders what Canberra has been doing for the last twenty years on smoothing the flow of goods, services, capital and ideas. Hopefully this is one of the relatively easy areas where a Gillard, or Abbott, government can deliver.

National objective 18b. The Australian economy will be more open and integrated with Asia, through comprehensive regional agreements, better aligned economic regulations, greater infrastructure connectivity and enhanced understanding of each country’s arrangements. The flow of goods, services, capital, ideas and people will be easier and Australian businesses and investors will have greater access to opportunities in Asia.

This objective focuses around formal trade links and really only describes the current policy – continued from the Howard government – of signing bilateral trade agreements rather than waiting for the cumbersome and possibly never ending global negotiations to actually deliver something.

Most of Chapter Seven is focused on describing the various trade initiatives the Australian government is engaged in through APEC, ASEAN and various other forums.

All of these are good initiatives and these are the brightest spot in the entire report, this is where the Australian political system has delivered bipartisan support for a long term plan and it’s a shame we can’t see more actions similar to this in areas like education, taxes and sustainability.

Running out of luck

Is Australia’s luck running out in the digital and Asian economy.

Last week I was lucky to get along to Digital Australia and Emergent Asia panel held at PwC’s Sydney office where the panel looked at how Australia’s industries are adapting to the digital economy and evolving Australian markets.

The outlook from the panel was generally downbeat about the ability of Australia’s business leaders and politicians to adapt to the changes in the global economy although there were some optimistic points about the resilience and flexibility of the nation.

I did a write up for it on Technology Spectator which is online at It’s Not Good Enough To Be Clever

The challenge is on for Australia’s business leaders – let’s see if they are up to it.

Australian Hubris in the Asian Century

Australia in the Asian century is the story of opportunities missed.

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

The release of the Australia in the Asian Century discussion paper today raises the question of where the country sees itself and where it is going. It lets us down on many levels.

While there’s a lot more to discuss in the paper, which I’ll do over the next few days, there’s a few issues that come to mind on first reading.

The reliance on mining

A constant  in the discussion about Australia’s future is the continued mining boom. This was the underlying theme of Monday’s Mid-Year Economic Outlook and is also the case in the Asian Century paper. Here’s chart 4.4.2 from the document which shows the forecast makeup of Australia’s exports.

Today mining exports are shown as being just over 50% of Australia’s trade with Asia and have mineral income growing to well over 60% of trade by 2025.

What is frightening about this is the belief across Australia’s political and business leaders that the mining boom is here to stay and will continue to keep growing.

Little risk analysis

Also notable about the report is how little acknowledgement of risk there is in the document. Most of the risks are dismissed in six paragraphs in Chapter 4.4

Geopolitical risk does get its own chapter, but even there most of the challenges are glossed over. Eventually most of the risks are dismissed with this line.

None of these developments of themselves make major power conflict likely—in some important ways they will probably act as a constraint. All the major powers recognise how interdependent their economic interests are.

This is reminiscent of the line used in the late 1980s – “no two countries with a McDonalds have ever gone to war against each other.” A glib nonsense which ceased to be true when NATO attacked Serbia in an effort to stop the massacres of the Yugoslavian disintegration.

Trivialising the big risks

Had anyone predicted in 1986 that within five years, there would be a bloody civil war in Yugoslavia, the Eastern Bloc collapse and the Russian Empire’s eagle replace the hammer and sickle on the Kremlin they would have been dismissed as fools.

Yet that is exactly what happened.

The risk of instability within the People’s Republic of China isn’t mentioned or even the effects of what a collapse of North Korea would mean to South Korea – another key Australian mineral market – both of which would have massive effects on Australia’s export markets over the next decade.

While I’m certainly not forecasting the collapse of either the DPRK or the Communist Party of China in the near future, these are massive risks to any plan which purports to look at the next decade. Ignoring them or trivialising them does not help the paper’s credibility.

Australian hubris

Most notable in the white paper is the tone of Australian Exceptionalism through the commentary. In the Prime Minister’s speech she said “we are the nation that stared down the economic crisis.”

Calling massive stimulus packages, reinflating the property market and guaranteeing bank liabilities is hardly ‘staring down’. Australia’s avoiding going to into recession after the 2008 crisis was due to the “go early, go hard” philosophy of pumping money into the economy which was learned by Australia’s bureaucrats in the 1990s recession.

That policy worked to stave off recessions during the Asian currency crisis of 1998, the Long Term Credit Bank collapse and the post September 11 uncertainty. It worked on massive scale during the post-Lehmann Brothers collapse.

Crediting Australia with some sort of miracle economy is hubris on a grand scale and hardly the basis for developing a sensible plan to guide us through the next decade.

What is Australia’s competitive advantage?

Essential to understanding where the nation can prosper from the rise of Asian economies is where our current strengths lie. Apart from empty phrases on “skilled workforces” and “new opportunities will emerge in manufacturing” there’s no explanation of exactly where Australia can profit from these.

In fact most of the case studies refer to Australian companies outsourcing or Asian trading patterns that really don’t need any skilled or valued added contribution at all, a case in point is the story of ‘Hitesh’, one of India’s rising middle class.

Hitesh, 31, is a stockbroker in a firm that he opened with his friend several years ago. He brings in an annual income of US$5,280, placing his family squarely in the middle of Ahmedabad’s middle class.

Nowhere does the case study explain exactly what Australia can offer him – the air conditioners and cars certainly won’t be made or designed in Australia and his daughters’ educations in 2025 might well come through the internet from MIT or the London School of Economics instead of them flying to Melbourne to drive taxis and do barista courses in the hope of getting Australian permanent residency.

In fact if anything, it’s difficult to see why an Asian company would choose to do business with an Australian stockbroker when they earn thirty to a hundred times more than Hitesh.

1980s thinking

Much of what is in the white paper is what we’ve heard before in the 1980s – back then it was Yuske in Nagoya who was going to buy our wine and come to the Gold Coast for holidays.

There’s nothing in the projections we haven’t heard before, except today we’ve squandered two decades of opportunity by ramping up our property markets and building an unsustainable middle class welfare state.

Sometime in the 1990s – possibly around the time of John Howard’s election – Australia turned inwards and insular. We had the opportunity  to position Australia as a credible mid-level power in the region but we chose instead to renovate our kitchens.

That opportunity has been lost and repeating the mantras of the 1980s with the words ‘China’ and ‘Chinese’ substituted for ‘Japan’ and ‘Japanese’ won’t cut it.

Australia in the Asian Century was an opportunity to show some vision and stake a claim on sharing some of the 21st Century’s riches. Instead the writers chose to give us platitudes underpinned by the certainties of a never ending economic boom.

Heroes of Capitalism

When did it become acceptable for airlines to humiliate passengers and customers on national television?

The few times I watch television these days is either when the footy’s on or the rare occasions that I surface from my interweb connected man cave and stumble into a room where someone has a TV running.

And so it was tonight when I happened to wander out to witness a terrible airport “reality” show – this one being an unoriginal, third rate Australian effort where Tiger Airlines shows how it stuffs around and humiliates its passengers. In Australia, Channel Seven considers this to be prime-time TV “entertainment”.

What was striking about the show was how Tiger Airlines’ check in staff humiliated a pensioner and her young son who hadn’t printed out their boarding passes.

The “fee” for not carrying out a basic task which reasonable people would expect would be part of an airline’s service is $25 a head at Tiger Airlines – one could ask what the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s position is on excessive fees being used to pad airlines’, or banks’, profits but that would be asking too much of Canberra’s worlds best practice doughnut munchers.

As result the poor lady was expected to front up with another $50 – money she didn’t have. So Tiger Airlines’ check in staff wouldn’t let her board and Channel Seven’s camera crew gleefully filmed her desperate tears and shocked son.

Eventually a bystander took pity on her and gave her $60. At least someone in the terminal had some decency and compassion, qualities neither the Tiger Airlines staff or Channel Seven camera crew have in the tiniest way.

No doubt somewhere in an anonymous glass tower some arsehole has a job as a manager at Tiger Airlines and has a KPI that includes how many poor mothers they can reduce to tears.

When the arsehole Tiger Airlines manager gets its annual bonus for making the required number of victims passengers weep, it no doubt goes to lunch with the Channel Seven executives – another bunch of arseholes – to slap each others’ backs and tell themselves what great heroes of capitalism they are.

The question that bugs me is when did it become acceptable to humiliate your customers? No doubt Tiger Airlines think it’s good publicity and Channel Seven think it is good entertainment.

We live in interesting times when our business leaders think it isn’t good enough just to take customers’ money but that it’s also necessary to humiliate them as the managements of both Channel Seven and Tiger Airlines seem to be rewarded for doing.

Fortunately in these corporatist days we still can vote with our wallets and turn off the muck we find offensive – that’s why decent people shouldn’t choose to fly Tiger Airlines or watch Channel Seven.

Open Table and free mobile restaurant sites

Mobile websites are becoming essential to the hospitality industry.

One of the big challenges facing restaurants is how customers are moving to the mobile web, diners are using their smartphones to find establishments and expect to make bookings directly.

To help their customers deal with this move to smartphones, restaurant booking service Open Table is offering a free mobile website for their clients so establishments can have sites that are usable on smaller screens.

Whether this is worthwhile depends upon whether the restaurant is already using Open Table, the monthly fees are quite high at $200 per month plus a relatively low $1 commission per cover so it certainly isn’t worth subscribing to their service just to get a mobile optimised website.

For restaurants already using their service it’s best to check if your existing website already has a mobile feature as having two online addresses is only going to confuse customers.

Businesses using WordPress based sites just need to install a plug like WordPress Touch which detects when a smaller screen is viewing your site to change.

Open Table itself is somewhat of an internet old timer having been founded in 1998, making it one of the Tech Wreck survivors, and listed on the NASDAQ market eleven years later.

That a company like Open Table is recognising a mobile web presence is essential for hospitality businesses should be a further warning to restaurants, cafes and hotels that they need to take smartphones seriously.

Just as thirty years ago it was essential to have a Yellow Pages listing, today you’re missing out on customers if they can’t find you on their phones.

Regardless of whether you’re using Open Table or any other service, you need to have some form of mobile site working for you.

Amazon and the Soviet customer service model

We all value our collections of CDs, books and photos, but what happens when we completely lose the digital equivalents?

We all value our collections of CDs, books and photos, but what happens when we completely lose the digital equivalents?

The story of Linn, a Norwegian lady who had her account terminated by Amazon, demonstrates the dangers of being locked into one Internet company’s empire. Get cut off and you lose everything related to them.

A little understood part of the cloud computing and app world is that you, the customer or user – which isn’t necessarily the same thing – don’t really own anything. The money you spend on ebooks, mobile apps or web storage are for licenses to use the services, not the products themselves.

Should the supplier decide they no longer want to provide you with their service, then you lose your account and everything with it.

This is what happened to Linn when Amazon’s algorithm decided her account was in some way breaching their terms and conditions.

We have found your account is directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies. As such, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed and any open orders have been cancelled.

Per our Conditions of Use which state in part: Amazon.co.uk and its affiliates reserve the right to refuse service, terminate accounts, remove or edit content, or cancel orders at their sole discretion.

“At their sole discretion” is the key point here. This is a standard term in most online contracts and reflects the legal realities of the physical world where a shopping mall manager or bar owner can ask you to leave their property without having to tell you why.

When you use a virtual service, which includes e-books and cloud computing software, you are on someone’s virtual property and they can ask you to leave any time they feel.

Of course those rights are subject to any contract you might have with that e-book seller, cloud computing service or shopping centre but you have to be in a position to enforce them – not an easy task when you’re in Norway and their lawyers are in Connecticut.

Even if you want to enforce the agreement you believe these services have entered into, the grossly biased contracts attempt to put all obligations on users or customers while freeing the vendor of the distraction of being responsible for anything.

The real problem though is the lack of notice and fairness – this blog’s previously looked at how PayPal, Facebook and Google will shut down business sites without any warning or due process.

It’s one thing to get thrown out of a shopping mall but it’s another matter when your car and week’s groceries are still in there.

Even more worrying in Linn’s case is how ebooks and music purchased with Digital Rights Management (DRM) controls can be erased by companies like Amazon. Which is like walking home from the shopping mall you’ve been banned from to find the manager has called by to confiscate the toaster and TV you bought last week.

What’s particularly notable in all of these stories though is the Soviet customer service model, the Amazon”Executive Customer Relations” representative Linn dealt with refused to tell her what she’d done wrong or what rules she broke.

The only thing “Michael Murphy” would tell her was she was effectively banned for being linked to a blocked account and stated;

“Please know that any attempt to open a new account will meet with the same action.”

No notice, no appeal, no rights. The computer says no and the bureaucrat cannot help you further.

Trust lies at the core of all business and this is even more true when buying services like e-books and cloud computing products. If you can’t trust a vendor to provide a service, or to act openly and honest with you when a problem occurs, then it’s unlikely you’ll use that service.

A lack of trust is what web 2.0 companies like Amazon and eBay risk with hostile, Soviet style customer service. This is the weak point of the entire online business model.

For individuals and businesses it’s important to understand that those e-book, cloud storage or social media services may appear to be a bargain, but there are risks lurking in the fine print.

The new Soviets might be doing well at the moment, but their days are numbered just as the USSR’s were.

Free content’s shaky foundations

The free content model of many Internet startups is inevitably flawed.

Musician’s rights advocate David Lowrie has a takedown on his Trichordist of Pandora’s campaign to change the US music royalty payment system through the Internet Radio Fairness Act.

Pandora and other online streaming services claim the current arrangement is unfair and puts them at a disadvantage to terrestrial AM and FM radio stations. Artists and record labels claim this is just a way to cut rights payments.

David suggests that Pandora’s founders either lied about the sustainability of their business at the time of their IPO last year or are just being plain greedy.

Regardless of what is true, or whether David is overstating the case against the IRFA, a truth remains that many Internet business models are unsustainable and Pandora’s may be one of them.

Most unsustainable of all are those who rely on free content.

Eventually the market works to filter out those who won’t pay for content – the good writers and artists move onto something more profitable, like driving buses or serving hamburgers, or they figure out they may as well control their own works rather than let some Internet company profit from their talents and labor.

The website or service offering nothing in return for the contributor’s hard work eventually ends up distributing garbage – Demand Media or Ask are examples of this.

In a marketplace where crap is everywhere, just pumping out more crap is not a way to make money.

Those looking at investing in businesses which rely on free content need to remember this, if no-one values the product then you have no business.

Sadly too many internet entrepreneurs, and corporate managers, believe the road to their wealth is through not paying artists, musicians or writers. They are the modern robber barons.

What are businesses thinking about?

The City of Sydney Business Awards recognised the best of the city’s commercial communities, but what’s going through the minds of the finalists?

Last night the Sydney Business Awards honoured the city’s best enterprises at a gala dinner where a whole group of great businesses were acknowledged for their great work.

The awards were the result of a three month process where the public voted on several hundred businesses to determine ten finalists in each category. The finalists were then evaluated by judges for each category. I judged the Online Business group.

The Events Agency who organized the awards today sent me a word cloud taken from the winners’ entry forms. This illustrates what the entrants were talking about in their submissions.

A wordcloud of the Sydney Business Awards winners entries
The word cloud of the Sydney Business Awards winners’ entries.

Staff is the biggest issue for businesses, followed by the two instances of ‘increase’ caused by one having a capital and the other not. If we combined the two instances ‘increase’ would probably be the biggest word.

Given training is one of the other big words we can see the real challenge is training up staff. Marketing and funding also figure prominently.

While basic and from a very narrow survey base, that word cloud gives us some ideas of what worries business owners and a base to start answering those challenges.

The word cloud also explains why education, training and industrial relations are such important issues to the business community which is something both politicians and the media should consider.

Overall the quality of the businesses entered into this year’s awards was terrific. In the online section I really struggled to separate the great finalists and there was very little between Appliances Online who won the category and the two runners up.

What’s also interesting is how many of the finalists in other categories had strong online presences, illustrating how the web is important for all businesses.

Congratulations to all the entrants and particularly Climate Friendly who not only won the main Business Award but also the Sustainability and Environmental awards. Glebe Medical Centre was the winner of the Small Business Award and the Healthcare and Fitness category.

For those who didn’t win this year, it’s worth entering next year as good businesses only get better with time. Hopefully we’ll see your business or vote next year.

A quick Christmas checklist for hospitality businesses

What should cafes, restaurants and hotels do to be found by holiday makers and tourists?

For listeners of my regular spot on ABC Riverland, here’s a quick checklist for regional business owners to make sure their online presence is ready for the Christmas holidays.

Prospective customers are using the web to find businesses and attractions, so taking advantage of the free listing services by the major search engines and directories is the first step.

Google Plus Local

The search engine giant’s local service gives a free business listing that feeds into their results and those of many GPS devices and social media services.

Fill in as many fields as possible, making sure you don’t forget opening hours and payment methods you accept.

You can also upload photos and menus to your Google Local listing, all of these will help you come up higher in the search engine results.

True Local

News Limited’s True Local offers a similar service to Google and this also feeds into various services along with the local news sites run by the newspaper chain.

Again, fill in as many fields as possible and make sure all your essential business details are listed.

Sensis

While the Yellow and White Pages may be dying, a free listing with their site will help come up on the various Telstra sites and companies that partner with them.

Review sites

Eatability, Yelp and Tripadvisor are all popular sites and applications used by customers to research accommodation and venues. You need to grab your listing and check what previous customers have said about you.

Social media

Along with having your own listing on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and possibly sites like Pinterest; you should be doing regular searches to check what people are saying about you and your district.

One of the great things about social media is it’s a great market intelligence tool. For instance if there’s lots of people coming to your town to go fishing and there’s nobody catering for them, then this is an opportunity. Google Alerts can help you with this.

Your own website

Most important of all is your own website. Check that it works on smartphones and tablet computers, if necessary borrow a friend’s Android or Apple device and see what your site looks like on it.

When you review this with your web developer also check your keywords are working and make sure yourmeta-tagsall reflect what you have to offer your customers.

The Christmas-New Year rush is too important a period for hospitality business to miss out on customers. A few small thing might get you the visitors who might have kept on driving to the next town.