the blog of snoman has moved to ethical european ski holidays website and worldwide ski holidays online and ski holidays on mobile, by sno
SNO is a ski resort guide and ski holiday booking company which is committed to ethical ski travel - for us, that means trying to make sure our ski vacation money is spent locally
whether you're at home planning a ski trip or in resort looking for the best apres ski, babysitters, ski school instructors or local events, you can find all things sno-Local on your computer
SNO.co.uk and SNO.mobi are helping skiers and snowboarders to support LOCAL business to help keep the mountain communities the buzzing places we all love to visit
Friday, 18 September 2009
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Mobile Roaming Data Charges and Bill Shock
Since the legislation came into force about a month ago, many UK mobile companies have made a song and dance about their new and cheaper roaming calls and sms prices (declaring them as if they decided to give their customers gift of cheap summer hoilday roaming calls) but......
... the significant reduction in data roaming costs has yet to be passed on to consumers.
If I'm on ski holidays using roaming data in France, O2 pays the French mobile company a max of €1 for every megabyte I use - this French company is providing all of the mobile infrastructure for me to do this - O2 still charges me £2.99 (€4) per megabyte, yet all they are providing is a billing process!(not the cell base stations or mobile 3G infrastructure)
You can now buy a £50 "bolt on" which gives you 50MB (ie £1 per megabyte) but its a fixed price so is clearly only this cheap if you use exactly 50MB - and you can't buy more than one in month, so a high user is back up to the £2.99 per month for all data over 50MB.
O2 is by no means alone - in fact they are often the most forward thinking re roaming data - the industry continues to stunt it's own potentially explosive growth.
Essentially they are still trying to get away with mugging roaming data users - the first company to see they can corner the market here will make a killing - but the fact that none has yet is very suspicious
our website is the worlds first complete ski holidays and ski resort guide designed from the start for mobile - as you imagine, when a Brit is skiing, they are probably in another country... roaming!
We have designed the site with tiny data size so our users can't get a bill shock, but really it should be virtually free to surf a site with approx 20kb per page - in ANY country!
The EU rulings are certainly in the right direction (the phone companies proved they were not going to trade ethically on roaming data without outside legislation) but it neither goes far enough, nor is being implemented quickly enough.
The industry could easily have coped with the €0.5 euro per MB cap from the beginning and this rulin only serves to prolong the period in which operators can over charge their customers.
We'll give updates on mobile roaming data charges and the prevention of bill-shock over the course of this year.
... the significant reduction in data roaming costs has yet to be passed on to consumers.
If I'm on ski holidays using roaming data in France, O2 pays the French mobile company a max of €1 for every megabyte I use - this French company is providing all of the mobile infrastructure for me to do this - O2 still charges me £2.99 (€4) per megabyte, yet all they are providing is a billing process!(not the cell base stations or mobile 3G infrastructure)
You can now buy a £50 "bolt on" which gives you 50MB (ie £1 per megabyte) but its a fixed price so is clearly only this cheap if you use exactly 50MB - and you can't buy more than one in month, so a high user is back up to the £2.99 per month for all data over 50MB.
O2 is by no means alone - in fact they are often the most forward thinking re roaming data - the industry continues to stunt it's own potentially explosive growth.
Essentially they are still trying to get away with mugging roaming data users - the first company to see they can corner the market here will make a killing - but the fact that none has yet is very suspicious
our website is the worlds first complete ski holidays and ski resort guide designed from the start for mobile - as you imagine, when a Brit is skiing, they are probably in another country... roaming!
We have designed the site with tiny data size so our users can't get a bill shock, but really it should be virtually free to surf a site with approx 20kb per page - in ANY country!
The EU rulings are certainly in the right direction (the phone companies proved they were not going to trade ethically on roaming data without outside legislation) but it neither goes far enough, nor is being implemented quickly enough.
The industry could easily have coped with the €0.5 euro per MB cap from the beginning and this rulin only serves to prolong the period in which operators can over charge their customers.
We'll give updates on mobile roaming data charges and the prevention of bill-shock over the course of this year.
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
The www.sno.mobi Grand Alpine Tour
In the immortal words of George Peppard,
"I love it when a plan comes together!"
A few short months ago I dreamed a dream one wine soaked night...
... that we would take SNO ski holidays to the very people in the mountains for whom it was created...
Not for our ski website to email and call the entire ski holidays world, but rather to actually go there and meet everyone, one resort at a time!
It all made such sense and I began to drift off to sleep... smiling at the perfect plan... likely never to think of it again.
But fortune favours the self-aware...
...and these days I'm firmly in the habit of texting myself when I have a cunning plan in the wee small hours...
... the better to profit from somnambulent insight... or at least expose a flimsy wheeze to the cold judgement of morning.
Oddly, when I read it back the next day, it still seemed a great idea!
The best way to get sno.mobi out there to all the ski holidays businesses and accommodation.
With a 4 month window for this Grand Alpine Tour, we can visit and meet people in about 30 alpine ski resorts but... we'd need to do it in style and some comfort... and on the cheap.
In March I had done a month of travelling to meet the great and the good in Chamonix, Courmayeur, Meribel, Courchevel, Val Thorens, Verbier, La Tania and Orelle ski resorts. It was great to get enthusiasm from the Toursim Offices and local business and see people helping by linking back to sno ski holidays from their own ski websites but in truth, it was no good at all for family life.
I missed snogirl and the boy terribly and working all hours you're awake gets tiring - I needed to go home after work and 'have a life' like other working snomen... and I think that's how the idea of us all being in the mountains began to take shape.
OK - easy to organise a relocation except... we need to be in 2 resorts per week... and that means we can't just move to Chamonix for example. So here's the conundrum:
How can you live in a reasonably civilised manner, despite moving every 4 days?
Clearly living out of a suitcase is out and the cost of accommodation over 4 months is prohibitive.
A caravan was the obvious answer but they are known to by deeply uncool... then the penny dropped... I now had the perfect legitmate reason to buy a fabulous artefact that I have lusted after for as long as I have been a lover of "retro-cool" (and that's even before I was a snoman)
a vintage Airstream caravan!
It all suddently made sense, we could caravan and be proud in one of those fantastic silver bullet travel trailers from the 50's and 60's...
... and so the hunt began.
Next... the snoman meets Arizona Bill and El Paso Mark... on the hunt for a vintage Airstream in the good 'ol U.S of A
(this blog has moved to snoman )
Thursday, 7 May 2009
a quick trip to the blog
please take a look at our Chamonix mobile ski pages on SNO ski holidays or go straight there with Chamonix ski holidays
you can see that we already partnered with the world famous Compagnie du Mont Blanc who are now using our lift & piste info pages as their own mobile website - very cool!
you can use sno.mobi on ALL mobile phones, or try it out with the on-screen phone on your PC please take a look and tell us what you think - we have a big year ahead improving things and making sure all cell phones work - next is the pc or big-screen ski holidays site
wish us luck and link to us if you'd like to help - we're an ethical ski site!
I promise to write a proper blog soon - we have had a couple of really cool articles written about us so I'll copy them here once we have permisssion!
watch this space!
snoman
you can see that we already partnered with the world famous Compagnie du Mont Blanc who are now using our lift & piste info pages as their own mobile website - very cool!
you can use sno.mobi on ALL mobile phones, or try it out with the on-screen phone on your PC please take a look and tell us what you think - we have a big year ahead improving things and making sure all cell phones work - next is the pc or big-screen ski holidays site
wish us luck and link to us if you'd like to help - we're an ethical ski site!
I promise to write a proper blog soon - we have had a couple of really cool articles written about us so I'll copy them here once we have permisssion!
watch this space!
snoman
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
sno.mobi is LIVE in CHAMONIX !
I'm just back from an amazing week in Chamonix Mont Blanc ski holidays resort!
6 days and nights of talking to local business owners and managers and they were really enthusiastic - everyone thought SNO ski holidays was a great idea and loads of business have joined - our Chamonix ski holidays pages are already buzzing with bars, restaurants, taxi, ski instructors, lots of accommodation, property for sale and a lot more...
... but it gets even better...
... we have partnered with the Compagnie du Mont Blanc (the lift company that runs the whole valley) and they are now using us as their mobile channel. The guys there are very switched on - they're really aware of how mobile web has exploded, how expensive it still is (to build to work on all devices) and are keen to use our system to communicate all their info to visitors in-resort. They have put our stickers in all the gondolas, kiosks and lift stations in the valley and they now run our Piste & Lift info and Lift Pass pages as their own - a terrific partnership for us both!
We're also talking to the Office du Tourism - we can be very useful for them in the same way (providing a mobile communications channel for free, when it would be very expensive for them to build their own). We're thinking of allowing them to use the Events Listings for free (normally you would buy an Event Listing, like when a bar wants to List their Happy Hour). The Tourism Office can then List all the major Events in Chamonix... and everyone can see them because everyone has a mobile phone!
It's a great start, but for me, the best thing of all is how all the business owners and managers really agree with our goals for ethical business - we can keep it really cheap (so every business can afford to be found) so long as they all add a link to us and put our sticker in their window - it costs them nothing and saves them a lot of money (we don't need to spend their money on our advertising and search rank).
Sooo exciting - more to follow soon...
6 days and nights of talking to local business owners and managers and they were really enthusiastic - everyone thought SNO ski holidays was a great idea and loads of business have joined - our Chamonix ski holidays pages are already buzzing with bars, restaurants, taxi, ski instructors, lots of accommodation, property for sale and a lot more...
... but it gets even better...
... we have partnered with the Compagnie du Mont Blanc (the lift company that runs the whole valley) and they are now using us as their mobile channel. The guys there are very switched on - they're really aware of how mobile web has exploded, how expensive it still is (to build to work on all devices) and are keen to use our system to communicate all their info to visitors in-resort. They have put our stickers in all the gondolas, kiosks and lift stations in the valley and they now run our Piste & Lift info and Lift Pass pages as their own - a terrific partnership for us both!
We're also talking to the Office du Tourism - we can be very useful for them in the same way (providing a mobile communications channel for free, when it would be very expensive for them to build their own). We're thinking of allowing them to use the Events Listings for free (normally you would buy an Event Listing, like when a bar wants to List their Happy Hour). The Tourism Office can then List all the major Events in Chamonix... and everyone can see them because everyone has a mobile phone!
It's a great start, but for me, the best thing of all is how all the business owners and managers really agree with our goals for ethical business - we can keep it really cheap (so every business can afford to be found) so long as they all add a link to us and put our sticker in their window - it costs them nothing and saves them a lot of money (we don't need to spend their money on our advertising and search rank).
Sooo exciting - more to follow soon...
Friday, 20 February 2009
I just want everyone to "get it" - you know?
OK so the ski holidays website is finished...
...actually, it will never be "finished" (too many amazing ideas & features to add) but it's up & running & looking rather slick...
... And now it's time to explain to the world (one snoLover at a time) why it's the cleverest, most brilliantly useful thing since sliced bread!
... And now it's time to explain to the world (one snoLover at a time) why it's the cleverest, most brilliantly useful thing since sliced bread!
But what if they don't "get it" or worse, don't care?
I truth, I've been working on sno ski holidays for nearly 2 years... full time for the last 6 months... and invested quite a lot in it emotionally. I think it's a brilliant idea - it's certainly a world's first - but I really must find a good way of telling people about it that gets them as excited as me!
If you're reading this blog, would you please read my explanation below and tell me if it excites you... sounds cool... makes sense... would make you try out sno.mobi... etc...
I really need all the advice and feedback I can get...
My explanation goes something like this:
SNO.mobi puts the whole ski resort in your pocket !
It's the world's first ski holidays and ski resort guide on your mobile phone - sno mobi works on all phones and it's completely free.
We don't take our computer on ski holiday & rarely go to a net-cafe, but everyone carries their phone in their pocket, everywhere, all the time.There's the usual snow forecast & piste conditions...
... but sno.mobi also has bars & restaurants, events & babysitters,
ski holidays and apartments for rent & ski resort property for sale...
... ski & snowboard instructors...
... taxi & buses...
... even ski jobs & all attractions & facilities...
... for Hundreds of the world's top resorts!
Every listing has a map & you can even save your chalet address and get free navigation.
You even get free email if you join and that works on all phones too!
Yes, maps & navigation & email but you don't need a fancy mobile - it works on ALL phones
and we don't charge a penney!
In fact, we've designed the whole service for the small screen so page size is tiny, to avoid big data bills.
WHY?
We think that, like us, most skiers & boarders would prefer to support local business in-resort, to help keep ski comunities the vibrant & buzzing places we love to visit - snow ski holidays is designed to make that easy!
Also, because everyone can rate everything on the site, snoLovers can help each other find the best places to stay, eat, drink, shop, get tuition, etc -
Also, it makes the world of difference to find out what areas are open/closed or have the best conditions or longest lift queues before you even leave your apartment.
Also... there are a lot of other "also" 's
ETHICAL BUSINESS
We also believe in ethical business so, instead of maximising what we charge a business to Get-Listed, we minimise it, so that everyone can afford to be found on mobile - from the awesome Ecole du Ski Francais to the chalet girl who needs to earn a bit extra by babysitting.
Most quality ski resort guides charge one to two hundred euros per year for a Listing - we charge just €19 or $24.
It's because they need to spend all that extra money on their Google rank - but we don't - in return for keeping it so cheap, we ask each business to add a link to us on their own website & put our sticker in their window - it's a virtuous circle where the small business benefits instead of the Google billionaires.
There's sooo much more I can say about the amazing service we've built and the strong socially responsible principles of our business, but you can read it all on your site - go to the ski holidays sites on your PC...
... anyhooo, please please tell me how this all sounds...
... good? ... useful? ... ethical? ... confusing? ... like a scam? ... the cleverest thing in the history of cleverness?
I'm off to Chamonix on Sunday to spend a week explaining to everyone why sno.mobi is so brilliant...
... I hope they "get it"
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