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  • Thomas Cook offers free insurance on travel money

    With summer well and really here, many thousands of holidaymakers are preparing themselves for his or her annual holiday abroad. However, with many leaving it until only a week before departure to switch their pounds for foreign currencies in step with Thomas Cook research, customers may be searching for a quick and simple way of not just getting great rates on their foreign currencies – but in addition keeping it safe.

    With that during mind, Thomas Cook is offering customers free insurance on travel money in recognition that existing policies won’t cover forex within the event of loss or theft. The only real high street forex provider to do that, Thomas Cook’s free insurance cover is exclusively available in stores, and is sweet for brand spanking new purchases of foreign currencies notes from £500 as much as a maximum value of £2,000. It’s going to apply from the date of purchase to the date of return to the united kingdom, or for 31 days – whichever is less**.

    For holidaymakers unsure how much foreign currencies they may need, Thomas Cook recently launched a vacation Budget Calculator hosted on thomascook.com. The Calculator aims to assist holidaymakers gauge how much forex they could need ahead through calculating the important cost of holiday essentials abroad. The service, that is powered by data collected and compiled overseas and in resort by the Thomas Cook Travel Money team, calculates totals by means of the typical cost of selected holiday essentials in loads of popular tourist destinations, along with a bottle of beer, glass of wine or a 3 course meal.

  • News: Norwegian Cruise Line selects NICE Workforce Optimization Solutions

    NICE Systems announced today that Norwegian Cruise Line is adopting NICE’s Interaction Management, analytics-based Quality Optimisation, and customer feedback survey solutions to deliver an enhanced customer experience. The cruise operator selected the great offering as portion of its Cisco contact center method to also improve sales effectiveness and operational efficiency.

    Norwegian Cruise Line will use the good solutions to use quality measurement metrics and solicit customer feedback via IVR (Interactive Voice Response) survey for its three U.S. contact centers. This may occasionally enable the corporate to achieve valuable insights into its customer interactions, including direct input on service levels. This knowledge can assist the cruise operator decide where improvement is required a good way to further enhance customer experience. For example, it can decide that additional agent coaching is wanted with a purpose to close agent knowledge gaps and improve first contact resolution rates.

    By improving the standard of its service, Norwegian Cruise Line shall be ready to achieve greater customer satisfaction and loyalty. It should also help the corporate reduce operational costs and increase revenues by enjoying greater opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling.

    “The NICE solutions provide added value to our contact center operations as they are going to enable us to strengthen our position throughout the competitive cruise industry,” said Crane Gladding, senior vice chairman of passenger services for Norwegian Cruise Line. “Taken along with our existing Workforce Management solution from NICE, we’ve a more comprehensive set of capabilities for optimising our workforce and improving our contact center performance. We’re confident that this may help boost our customer support and deliver measurable return on investment.”

    “This care for Norwegian Cruise Line is a fantastic example of the way our Cisco partnership helps companies leverage best-of-breed technology within a unified communications strategy,” said Barak Eilam , President of NICE Americas. “We are excited to determine companies like Norwegian Cruise Line embrace the great/Cisco offerings to optimise their contact center operations and enhance the buyer experience.”

    Select NICE Workforce Optimization solutions are portion of the Cisco SolutionsPlus program, which delivers a one-stop ordering experience for Cisco’s customers, channel partners, and sales teams for certain third-party products and applications. The solutions integrate with the Cisco MediaSense recording platform.

  • St. Ermin’s Hotel joins Autograph Collection

    The Autograph Collection, Marriott International’s exclusive portfolio of upscale, independent hotels, announced today the debut of the St. Ermin’s Hotel within the Westminster area of London, representing the third Autograph Collection hotel within the Uk.

    Earlier this month, Autograph Collection announced its entree into the united kingdom with the inauguration of Threadneedles inside the heart of London’s financial district and The Glasshouse in central Edinburgh, Scotland.

    The 331-room iconic St. Ermin’s Hotel will expand the gathering of independent lifestyle hotels to incorporate greater than 40 exceptional travel experiences within the Usa, Europe, Caribbean, and South America.

    The vision behind the Autograph Collection is to give an evolving group of passionately independent hotels that fall under distinct categories of travel experience including Culinary Delight, Artistic Getaway, Historic Exploration, or Sporting Adventure.

    Each hotel is thoughtfully chosen for its quality, originality, bold character and capacity to present guests a number of unique and unexpected experiences fitted to their individual sense of favor and adventure.

    This unique global portfolio has proven to be a highly successful venture simply by its discerning process to choose only probably the most exceptional hotels and enriching travel experiences.

    “This is an exceedingly exciting time for the Autograph Collection, and a major event for us in a main, central London location,” said Amy McPherson, president and managing director for Marriott International in Europe.

    “Our three Autograph Collection hotels within the Uk offer travellers an enviable range of artistic, culinary and cultural adventures and this historic hotel is a hugely powerful addition. “

    St. Ermin’s, converted from a Victorian apartment block to a hotel in 1899, is found within a brief walk of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the homes of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, St. James’s Park and diverse other central London landmarks and attractions. 

    The hotel, that’s Grade II listed and boasts numerous original Victorian characteristics, enjoys an illustrious history. 

    It served because the headquarters of the British Secret Service during World War II, and given its proximity to the homes of Parliament, was a preferred political meeting venue for decades.

  • News: Concur sees travel management momentum from U.S. government agencies

    Concur, the worldwide leader in integrated travel and expense management, today announced that increasingly more federal agencies have signed up for the company’s E-Gov Travel Service 2 (ETS2) option to help them realise the price savings, compliance benefits, and reporting capabilities that result from using an integrated travel and voucher management service to higher manage the complete cost of a visit. GSA’s core mission is to deliver cost savings to federal agencies and ETS2 is a necessary tool for federal agencies for efficient, cost-effective travel management strategies and delivery of real savings to the taxpayer.

    The Concur solution – selected in June of 2012 to power the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) innovative program for managing online bookings, travel authorisations and voucher processing is currently being implemented by right here agencies:
    *  Department of Agriculture
    *  Department of Commerce: Patent and Trademark Office
    *  Department of Energy
    *  Department of Energy: Bonneville Power Administration
    *  Department of Health and Human Services
    *  Department of Homeland Security: Federal Emergency Management Agency
    *  Department of Homeland Security: Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
    *  Department of Interior
    *  Department of Interior: Interior Business Center
    *  Department of Treasury: Bureau of the general public Debt
    *  Department of Treasury: Internal Revenue Service
    *  Environmental Protection Agency
    *  National Aeronautics and Space Administration
    *  Nuclear Regulatory Commission
    *  National Science Foundation
    *  Small Business Administration
    *  Smithsonian Institution
    *  U.S. General Services Administration

    “We understand GSA’s core mission is to deliver cost savings to federal agencies and as one in all our largest customers we believe that our integrated travel and expense solution may also help federal agencies who’re seeking the ideal Trip experience find the pricetag savings they’re in search of,” said Steve Singh , chairman and CEO of Concur. “We stay up for helping those we’ve already signed rise up and running quickly if you want to experience a similar benefits our existing clients enjoy.”

  • British government urged to develop music tourism strategy

    A cross party group of influential peers has called at the British government develop a brand new way to support music-based tourism and help grow the united kingdom economy.

    The call was made during a home of Lords debate at the impact of music on tourism.

    The debate’s sponsor, Liberal Democrat Lord Storey said music festivals were attracting unprecedented numbers of overseas visitors and feature been pouring money into local economies. 

    He argued that the world’s “evident love” of the UK’s musical heritage should now be harnessed and used to support music tourism.

    A 2011 report estimated music tourists spend £1.4 billion and sustain over 20,000 jobs. 

    “I have seen first-hand the positive impact music could make on local tourist economies.

    “But, we also needs to consider the impact music could have at the country as a complete,” Lord Storey said. 

    “Great Britain simply has an excessive amount of potential for musical tourism for the federal government to face idly by. 

    “I strongly urge the federal government to think about how best to implement a well defined music strategy.”

    Storey suggested that to draw more overseas music tourists, government should emphasise and have interaction with existing tourist bodies and authorities across Britain and help them market themselves as music tourist destinations.

    Storey’s stance was supported by Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke, who’s also a non-executive director of the national tourism agency VisitBritain. 

    “We aren’t doing in addition to shall we for music tourism,” she explained.

    “We should have more resource behind promoting our music tourism,” she argued, adding that it was important to cultivate the overseas music visitor because although they simply make up a minority of music tourists, they account for almost 20 per cent of music tourism spend.

    “We have the talent, the determination and the global focus.  Allow us to make this a key pillar of our tourism strategy into the longer term.”