Car Sales in Ireland & the Tourist Industry

The number of new cars sold in a country has always been one of the main barometers to the health of the economy. Unsurprisingly, car sales have slumped in Ireland when compared with 2008, down over 60% year on year.

Figures from the motor industry show that car sales are down 39% for June 2009 when compared with the same month in 2008. While the June figures appear to show a much smaller drop in car sales figures when compared with the rest of the year, June 2008 had experienced low levels of sales.

While car sales figures are usually viewed in isolation, the car rental market in Ireland during 2008 was responsible for over 12% of all car sales. To the year to date, car rental companies have been responsible for over 10% of all registrations, but the difference of 2% hides the actual figures which are drastic. The total number of new cars supplied to the car rental market has declined by 70% from January to May, or from over 14,000 cars during 2008 to over 4,000 cars during 2009.

With such a massive decline in new cars being purchased by the car rental sector, there is concern that prices could be pushed up. Fewer visitors are expected in Ireland during 2008 which will go some way to ease demand, but car rental companies are also bound to be approaching 2009 with a very cautious outlook, focusing more on fleet usage wherever possible.

“We did a forecast at the end of the first quarter and we did three different scenarios and in the worst case scenario, the numbers visiting the island of Ireland would be down 8 per cent. So we would expect 8 million overseas visitors to visit this year, compared to 8.8 million in 2008.” – Tourism Ireland

In previous years car dealers supplied the car rental market with buy backs, where they would sell the car to the car rental agency with an agreed price for the car to be bought back by the dealer at the end of an agreed timeframe. This allowed car rental companies to expand their fleet during peak periods.

However, the credit crunch and declining sales figures for new cars has left many car dealers in Ireland with yards full to the brim with aging stock, and not wanting to take cars back they had previously sold.

There are many factors to be considered when comparing car rental costs to the tourist including short supply of cars. Many car rental firms will be using aging stock which are likely to be more costly to run, and harder to upgrade to newer stock. Used cars have to be sold by the car rental companies, which have also fell heavily in price over the last 12 months.

Many car rental companies will end up with an aging stock with high mileage and high maintenance costs. Car rental companies such as Thrifty Car Rental are working hard to modernise their fleet and grow market share.

Paul Redmond, chief executive of the Car Rental Council has recently said that while dealers were willing to engage in car hire schemes, the tightening of credit has led to banks refusing to take the risk associated with the value of cars being bought back.

“Dealers have cleared their used car stocks and the banks have moved to reduce their credit facilities so having reduced stock to very low levels they are left with no funding to restock or to engage in car hire programmes. A relief allowed to tourists since the early 1990s that meant they didn’t have to pay a proportion of the vehicle registration tax that applies in Ireland is being abandoned by the Government from 2010.” – Paul Redmond – Car Rental Council Chief Executive

Related Stories
- Car rental woes to impact tourists
- Retail sales plunged in April, led by motors

GPS Hire Prices in Ireland 2009

I have previously looked at this topic (GPS Rental Prices in Ireland), and I thought it might be worth having another look at. Car hire charges in Ireland are always the subject of much controversy (rightly or wrongly), but the additional extras which probably do not form part of the decision making process for many people can really add up.

Company		Daily Rate	Weekly Rate
Thrifty Car Rental	-	€10	€50
Atlas Car Hire.com	-	€10	€50
e Car Rental Ireland	-	€10	€50
Malone Car Rental	-	€10	€50
County Car Rental	-	€9	€63
Dan Dooley	-	€9.90	€69.3
Car Hire.ie	-	€10	€70
Irish Car Rental	-	€10	€70
Hertz Rent a Car	-	€10	€70
Avis Rent a Car	-	€15	€75
Europcar	-	€11.35	€79.45
Budget Car Rental	-	€15	€105
Others		Daily Rate	Weekly Rate
Sat Nav Hire***	-	€4 Per Day***	€28 Per Week

***Sat Nav Hire.ie is available to Irish residents only and works on a postal system. A ‘pre auth’ will be preformed on your credit card as security, but I have not been able to find out how much this is for.

Considering some of the more expensive prices per week (e.g. Budget Car Rental), it would make sense for people to purchase their own sat nav system before travelling to Ireland. You can buy a Garmin 200w with UK & Ireland maps on Memoryc.com for €136.08.

The Main Irish Forums

This is a slight change of focus for the blog, but I think it will be a useful post for people looking for more information about Ireland. All of the forums listed bellow have a very active membership and cover a multitude of topics.

General Topics

There are two major forums in the Irish space; Boards.ie and Ask About Money.com.

Boards.ie
Boards.ie is probably the biggest forum in Ireland and covers a whole array of topics. The forum is generally friendly, very helpful and knowledgeable.

Ask About Money
Online community that offers independent financial advice about Irish financial issues to all comers. The membership are again very helpful and knowledgeable and many of the posts deal with the finer details of cusomer issues, taxation and banking and much much more.

Travel & Tourism

Thorn Tree Travel Forum – Ireland
This forum is ideal for people seeking advice on possible travel itineraries around Ireland. There is no shortage of feedback or reading material on this forum.

As always if you think I have left something out or feel something should be added please leave me a comment.

A Wander Along Ireland’s Wild Side

While I don’t usually do these types of posts, I think anybody looking for information on travelling to Ireland should read this article, A Wander Along Ireland’s Wild Side.

There is plenty of information for anybody looking to get out into the Irish country side and do some walking and mentions Walk of the West:

“Our tour guide and ex-pat Irishwoman, Rachel Ryan, now of Nelson, promised to show us favourite spots of her childhood as well as introduce us to the her Irish family.”

The article manages to capture the magic and history of Ireland’s countryside and historty:

“Upon close inspection, a multitude of wildflowers thrived among its karst pavements or clints. Old roads built during the famine go nowhere and deserted cottages crumble back into the landscape.

Across the chinking limestone we made our way to Keelhilla and the ancient hermitage retreat of St Colman Mac Duach which nestles beneath the frowning cliffs of Sliabh Cairn. I slurped from the crystal clear stream that still flows from his “healing well”, then squeezed into the same crevice cave where the monk lived for seven years in the 6th century.”

The article is by Gerard Hindmarsh.

Building Good Content for Better Rankings

This is the second in my series of SEO posts and will deal with the issues of writing unique and interesting content that will build links and generate visitors and in turn improve rankings. I’m going to touch on as many topics as possible in this article:

- Why writing content for a site is important
- The advantages of writing good content for your website
- Content Architecture for new Content Aimed at Optimal Results
- New content and linking strategies aimed at promotion
- New content and linking strategies aimed at promotion
- What to do when you have run out of ideas for writing new content

Disclaimer
It is important to note that these are my opinions and are formed what I think works well. SEO is all about your own personal approach and I would not recommend anybody take 100% of any particular idea without adding your own flare or approach. There are 1001 ways to market a site successfully online. Hopefully some of the tips mentioned here will be of use to you.

1 – Why Writing Content for a Site is Important

It would be very easy to get bogged down in discussing here if the freshness of your content matters to Google. Personally I think fresh content is good on a number of levels and I can see advantages Google algorithmically could take from this, but I prefer to focus on the quality of the content.

Where the freshness of content comes into play is when it comes to search engines spidering your site, but any active site will have natural updates concurrently. It would be very easy for me to throw up a 200 word article on my sites every day so Google thinks my content is fresh, but what value would that add to my visitors or my site?

I’m not going to argue Google doesn’t care about fresh content as part of its algorythmn, just that it isn’t something I focus on. I write content for websites to generate traffic, build website authority on a particular subject and hopefully mine good data from Google Analytics. If I write content people will read and enjoy, links / authority will build up naturally and increase rankings.

Example:
Wikipedia is a great example of this principle. Quality content is generated by editors which in turn gains links and ranks extremely well. You don’t have to look far on the internet to find examples of Wikipedia articles ranking very well for highly competitive terms. If you find yourself competing against Wikipedia drop me a line for some approaches or read this.

2 – The Advantages of Writing Good Content for your Website

While this topic is going to overlap on the previous topic. Good content as opposed to content for the sake of content will have a positive effect on your site:

- Frequent content updates will encourage search engines to visit more
- Bringing quality content to visitors is central to Google
- By adding good quality content Google will view your as an authority
- People will link to good content they read online
- New content allows you to target additional keywords
- The more content you have on a the more information you are giving Google

Good content will also keep people on your site longer and result in lower bounce rates which could also form part of the Google algorythmn. If somebody has a positive experience on your site they are more likely to return and remember your site.

Potential customers will research a particular product or service in detail before making a decision. In the case of a holiday, flights will be purchased first, then hotels and car rental finally. By writing good content around a subject you may be able to influence future customers and provide positive information about your company and service. Maybe your service distinguishes itself from the competition because of your personal service?

New content along with a good working knowledge of Google Analytics can give you valuable insight into possible new niche areas or emerging markets in your field.

3 – Content Architecture for new Content Aimed at Optimal Results

Every SEO you ask about this will give you a different answer. Personally I build pages on a subject around a focus page which I want to rank. I think the best way to demonstrate what I mean is by example.

Fictitious Example: A Dublin Hotel site wanting to target Dublin Airport Hotel related terms.

My first step would be to build a dedicated Dublin Airport Hotels information page which would provide valuable information for people looking to book a hotel at Dublin Airport. I would build external links to this page where I can with a mixture of anchor text, both with my key phrases, containing variations of my key phrases and with more natural text such as click here etc.

I would then build a sub section of the site in question with as much quality content to do with Dublin Airport, Hotels, Accommodation and any other information I could find including latest news stories. I would link these back to the page I want to rank with a variety of anchor text. These pages may rank for niche terms and will allow me to carry out active keyword research and ensure I’m not missing any terms I should be looking closer at.

I believe external links to relevant pages is an important factor when it comes to giving Google information about your topic. For the record I don’t believe in Page Rank sculpting or no following links (either internal or external) within a site (further reading). I personally haven’t checked the Page Rank of a site in Google in recent memory.

4 – New Content and Linking Strategies Aimed at Promotion

Considering the fictitious example above, I would link out extensively to sites in order to build relevance, hoping that some webmasters may notice I’ve linked to their website and return the favour. I’m not going to rehash any of the thousands of posts out there already giving 101 link building tips. If you are at this stage and are short of ideas I personally would see if I can get guest posts on relevant blogs. This blog for example would be an ideal target in our fictitious example above and always welcomes guest contributions.

If you think your content is sufficiently strong you could submit your site to StumbleUpon or other social book marking sites (technically you should wait for other people to submit your site first). If you buildauthority to a page that is already relevant to your chosen topic, you can pass this authority along to your target page which will result in better rankings.

5 – Advanced Linking Strategies For New Content

Promoting a Site You Wish to Obtain a Link From:
If you wanted to get a link from a particular website you’ve linked to, you could give it a prominent place on one of your sub sites that is receiving traffic. The chances are some visitors will click on the link, possibly resulting in your website becoming one of their most prominent traffic sources, one they won’t want to lose.

When you contact them regarding returning the link love you could mention the fact you are sending them traffic to further your case. Obviously you could artificially inflate the amount of traffic you appear to be sending them, but I couldn’t recommend such a strategy here (clicking on this link daily yourself to simulate traffic). There is no point in attempting this if you think you will be dealing with a less savvy webmaster or if you can’t see an analytics package installed on their site.

Log Link Matching:
Chances are your new content will build links naturally if it is good enough, but having links and Google seeing these links and counting them are two different things. You can very easily compare your traffic sources against indexed links in Google Webmaster Tools to see if there are significant differences.

If you find a number of links you would like Google to discover, you could encourage Google to index those sites better. Simply set up links from other sites you control to these pages. This maintains the natural one way nature of these links, but might help them be counted by Google.

6 – What to do When You Have Run out of Ideas for Writing new Content

Every webmaster will run out of ideas on how to approach a particular subject. Luckily there are a few ways to help you generate new ideas for a subject.

RSS Feeds:
Monitoring latest news through a RSS reader for particular topics may provide you with endless new content fodder and keep you on the pulse for your subject of interest. Google News easily allows you to create custom RSS feeds based on a search phrase (example).

StumbleUpon:
This is my particular favourite for getting a good overview of existing good content. For those of you who don’t know what StumbleUpon is please click here for an explanation. Bearing in mind that StumbleUpon provides content based on other people’s views, there is a good chance the pages are high quality.

Go to StumbleUpon and search your topic of interest, in this case Dublin Airport Hotels. Then click on Stumble Dublin Hotel Sites and StumbleUpon will bring you through highly rated content related to your area of interest which will hopefully get your creative juices flowing.

YouTube.com:
YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world and can form an important part of the decision making process for many potential customers. My last tip for when you have run out of all content creation ideas is to change focus and create a video for promotion on YouTube.com.

For example the top result on YouTube for Dublin Airport has been viewed over 66,000 times in 2 years. You can embed the video on your own site and a good quality video will generate links.

If you have any questions related to this post or feel I may have missed something please don’t hesitate to comment bellow.

Related Stories
- Log Link Matching from Blue Hat SEO
- 7 Tips for Writing Quality Content
- A Big Bunch of Link Buildi ng Ideas
- Catalysts for Earnign Natural Links
- Exactly Why is Fresh Content Good for SEO?

Bookmark This:

Bog of Frogs Looped Walk

There are four looped walks around Howth Head, Co Dublin. These walks range in difficulty from easy to hard and are ideally suited for people either looking for a scenic stroll or a challenging walk. The four walks in Dublin are:

- Lower Cliff Loop (Grade: Easy)
- Tramline Loop (Grade: Easy)
- Masts Loop (Grade: Moderate)
- Bog of Frogs Loop (Grade: Hard)

Howth Peninsula is situated 15km north east of Dublin City Centre and is very accessible by public transport, in particular the DART. All four routes both start and end at Howth DART station. Howth is a scenic village and a favourite haunt on summer days of Dublin People for the wide range of restaurants, cafes and bars on offer along with scenic views of the working harbour, Ireland’s Eye and Lambay Island. All of the four routes take in the Martello Tower and the Baily Lighthouse while the National Transport Museum is worth checking out.

The tourist information provided with the walk list the total distance as 10km, but I have done this walk twice and with rudimentary calculations I believe this walk to be in the region of 17 kilometres. The 3 hours allotted on the literature to complete the walk is optimistic at best and would be expected of walkers already at a good standard of fitness.

I have completed this walk twice, the first time in 3.5 hours and the second time in 2.5 hours, but at a very fast pace. The route is well signposted by minimal purple arrows at key points, although a print out of the route would be ideal. Proper walking boots are needed for the Bog of Frogs walk due to wet muddy patches while the other routes are paved much better.

Car Rental Discount: Info Ireland previously teamed up with Malone Car Rental Ireland to offer a 10% discount to those interested in partaking in hill walking activities. I have just checked with Malone Car Rental and they are willing to continue this offer. Malone Car Rental Ireland have numerous SUV suitable for such activities. To avail of this special offer, enter the following word into the promotional code field on the Malone website: Walking

Equipment Needed: Walking boots, Raingear, Snack Foods and Fluids

Images: Please click on an image to see a larger view

Related Articles
- Bog of Frogs Looped Walk – Malone Car Rental
- Bog of Frogs Loop Map
- Themed Looped Walks Developed in 18 Counties

Dublin Airport Second Runway Plans Scrapped

The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) is struggling financially in the face of an expected 11% decrease in passenger numbers during 2009 through Dublin, Cork and Shannon Airports. It has forecasted an earnings shortfall in the region of €60-70 million with the recession being named as the cause. Minimal traffic growth is expected up to 2011 and the company is expected to post losses for both 2009 and 2010. The economic slump has seen the first decline in passenger numbers at the three airports since the Gulf War in 1991.

“This is the deepest recession since the 1930s and it is having a huge impact on the aviation sector.” – Declan Collier, DAA Chief Executive

The DAA has asked for a minimum €3 increase in passenger charges for 2010 until 2015 to cover the costs of their capital investment. With passenger taxes already raised in the Budget, one must wonder how much additional expense can be placed on travellers before it starts negatively effecting numbers. Passenger charges are currently €7.50 per passenger and a final decision on the proposed increase will be made in October by the Commission for Aviation Regulation. Michael O’Leary stated that an increase in passenger costs would likely see Ryanair cut services at Dublin Airport.

In the mean time the DAA has informed trade unions that it will be seeking voluntary redundancies at the three airports in an attempt to save €20 million. These savings are in conjunction with changes already implemented that have resulted in the saving of €15 million.

”That the Commission for Aviation Regulation grant it a substantial increase in passenger charges as the company seeks to pay for a €1.2 billion capital investment in its facilities at Dublin Airport.” – Declan Collier, DAA Chief Executive

Current Runway at Dublin Airport by Tolka Rovers

The DAA has halved its capital investment program at Dublin Airport to €400 million for the period 2010 until 2014 and among the projects being shelved is the second runway at Dublin Airport. The DAA said it has had to introduce a number of cost-cutting measures because of a significant drop in profits and passenger numbers last year. The runway which was due to commence operation in 2014 could be deferred until 2018.

“We now feel the airport will not experience significant capacity constraints on the runway system for a number of years, thereby pushing back its commencement date” – Declan Collier, DAA Chief Executive

Significant capacity constraints is a vague, but one would of hoped there there would be no capacity constraints on Ireland’s main airport. There are no plans to extend the current runway to accommodate long haul flights to the Far East in light of this decision. The new runway would of opened up new markets to Dublin Airport and Ireland which would of been warmely welcomed by the struggling hotel industry in Ireland.

Aer Lingus who will be the anchor tenant at the new terminal have several A350s (long rang medium width aircraft) on order which would be capable of flying directly from Dublin to destinations such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and Cape Town. If the facilities are not provided by the DAA, Aer Lingus may have to look at basing its long haul fleet in the UK.

Related Stories
- Airport authority expects passenger numbers to fall 11%
- Second runway at Dublin Airport plans scrapped
- DAA predicts fall in passenger numbers

April – Hot Topics on Info Ireland

With the second post in this series we will be looking at three more topics that have brought significant traffic levels to Info Ireland. This is the second article in this series, and as with the first article I will look at the topics in more detail and provide links to the relevant posts.

10 Things to Do Related Terms

We get a lot of visits for the top 10 things to do in places or during time periods. Content presented like this makes a lot of sense for tourists because it presents the information in a concise manner. Please bear in mind these are my opinions and what I would like to do and are being taken from articles I have written on the topics previously:

1 – The Ring of Kerry
2 – Connemara and the Sky Road
3 – Dingle (Daingean Uí Chúis)
4 – A round of Golf
5 – Cruise on the River Shannon
6 – Newgrange Passage Grave
7 – A Pub Crawl in any town
8 – The Burren
9 – Festivals such as the Dublin Theatre Festival, Galway Arts Festival, Kilkenny Cat Laughs
10 – The Guinness Storehouse

Related Articles
– 10 Things to do in Ireland Before You Die []

When I went looking for more content on this topic on Google I was surprised this topic hasn’t been covered by every single travel website in Ireland. The existing articles were poor, self promotional and unrelated so it is not surprising we receive so much traffic on this term.

10 Things to do in Dublin

I think these are the standard top 10 things to do in Dublin, but like all lists it depends on what your interests are.

1 – Guinness Storehouse
2 – Temple Bar
3 – Grafton Street
4 – National Museum of Ireland
5 – Dublin Castle
6 – Dublin Zoo
7 – Trinity College
8 – Georgian Dublin
9 – Kilmainham Gaol
10 – Glendalough

Related Articles
- Top 10 Things to do in Dublin Before You Die
- Dublin’s Top 10 Things To Do
- 10 Things to do in Dublin

Irish Marathons

I think more and more Ireland will become a tourist destination for Marathon runners. There is the prestige of the Dublin Marathon and the appeal of the recent return of the Cork Marathon. But more than any other marathon in Ireland, the Connemarathon stands out as being unique in not just Ireland, but the world.

Related Articles
- The Irish Marathons
- Connemarathon
- Adidas Dublin Marathon
- Cork City Marathon
- The Irish Marathons For Those Who Dare

If you have any suggestions or topics you would like to see added, edited or addressed on this blog please do not hesitate to comment bellow.

Happy Birthday – 1 Year Old Recently

While Info Ireland technically started during March of last year, it was only in April that the blog found its’ feet and direction. Since then Info Ireland has gone from strength to strength in terms of quality content related to the Irish tourism market.

Like all blogs there are months where posting drops off slightly due to the pressures of non blog related life, but I will be announcing a new initiative that will hopefully give readers something new in the next day or two. If you have a topic or question related to travel in Ireland, why not post it as a question and let me answer it?

In the last month I’ve broadened the focus of the blog a little to include online marketing related posts relative to companies operating within the Irish Market. I’m hoping to blog on this topic at least once a month from now on.

As always, we welcome guest contributions and if you have a link, idea or a post that you think should be written please drop me a line.

Online Reputation Management

An Introduction to Online Reputation Management
Online visibility is critical to any company looking to develop business and brand awareness in the Irish tourist industry, but what happens if your business is at the receiving end of some bad publicity online? Poor management of bad publicity can magnify the situation and the consequences can be disastrous.

This has never been truer than with online publicity of a negative nature which can spread throughout the web in a very fast nature. In a worst case scenario, bad publicity can be made to rank for branded key phrases by a SEO savvy webmaster or blogger, effecting people who are looking for your business online. It is vital that companies carry out consistent research on their brand or business name so they are ideally placed to deal with any situation that may arise.

What is Online Reputation Management?
Online Reputation Management is exactly that, the managing of a reputation on online media such as search engines, press releases, viral content or user generated content such as blogs or forum postings. Due to the social nature of the internet, consumer generated content can spread easily throughout the internet. Online Reputation Management can also be used by a company for positive results.

How to Find Bad Publicity about Your Company Online
There are numerous ways of doing this:

- Keyword research on brand related terms
- Use systems such as Google Alerts

Often simply researching a branded key phrase on Google, Yahoo or various blog searches will be enough to find content that might be considered negative to your operation. Branded key phrases mixed with words such as poor, bad, terrible, review, unhappy etc are very effective at finding content that might need to be managed or engaged.

Google Alerts is a very effective way of finding out on a daily basis where your brand is being mentioned online. An alert can be set up to monitor any topic you want, and can be delivered either by email or RSS feed on a time scale of your choosing. Google Alerts monitors news stories and blogs along with video and web content.

This service offer a very easy way to monitor all brand related news on a hourly, daily or monthly basis, and are an extremely important part of your arsenal when it comes to dealing with bad publicity online.

Turning Bad Publicity to Good
If you discover negative content about your business online, step one should be to try and engage the person responsible and attempt to address the cause. Ignoring the issues at hand looks bad for two reasons: it shows you don’t care about your customers or that they had a bad experience, and you have failed to address the issue by responding to the customer. In many cases the bad publicity will be posted on a personal blog which allows ample opportunity for response and engagement.

Engagement with the unhappy customer shows any prospective customer that happens upon the content that you care about your customers and you are attempting to rectify the situation, leaving them with a positive impression of your company.

Legal or threatening approaches simply don’t work and will entrench support for the unhappy customer and may even result in the complaint going viral on the internet. If this happens the complaint will receive far more attention that it would of initially. The costs for this approach far outweigh the costs of engaging the customer and dealing with the issues raised.

What if you Can’t Engage The Customer?
If you are unable to engage with the complainer, and the complaint is very visible on the Search Engines for brand related key phrases, reactive search engine optimisation could displace a listing. For many companies this is the only option available, particularly if the complaint has been previously mishandled. This can be achieved by the following:

1 – Build links to other listings in the top 10 for the required phrase
2 – Set up sub domains or a blog related to your company which will take some of the places
3 – Release a press release through a site such as PR Web.com which can rank quickly

Examples of Bad Reputation Management
In the Irish tourist market, there is one case of bad online reputation management easily visible which results in this blog post ranking 3rd for the search term Budget Car Rental Ireland. This is a classic case of bad online reputation management. I’ll explore the case in chronological order:

June 2008
A customer (Peter Donegan) of Budget Car Rental rented a car, but felt the advertisement that enticed him to rent from Budget was misleading. He posted a copy of the advert, a copy of his receipt and all of his correspondence with the company, Failte Ireland and the Car Rental Council.

Dear Paul,
Is the point not ‘misleading pricing advertising’ ?
- for me it was never the money amount or figuring that out from my receipt
Slán go foill
Peter

The blog post gathered comment after comment with people retelling the bad experiences they had with car rental companies in Ireland. The post was now about poor experiences in an industry with Budget Car Rental being the focal point.

February 2009
Peter Donegan put a post on his blog saying he had received a call from a legal office informing him he had 48 hours to remove the post. Instead of dealing with the complaint and making sure Mr Donegan was happy with the customer service, a bogus legal threat put new life into the matter.

February 2009
The story gets picked up by the Blog of Bock the Robber who gives Budget the right to reply:

“A guy writes a post complaining about the bill he got from Budget Car Rental Ireland and some gobshite calls him up threatening legal action unless he takes down the post.” Bock The Robber

Budget Car Rental eventually replies saying they did not employ a solicitor to force Mr Donegan to remove the post. Since 19 February 2009 there has been no update on the post or clarification by Budget Car Rental on the matter, even by comment on the blog which anybody is free to do.

The end result is that if somebody types Budget Car Rental Ireland into Google.ie they will see a negative post about Budget Car Rental.

What Could Have Been Done Differently?
Budget Car Rental explained the bill (which was confusing) to Mr Donegan, but never once replied about on point on misleading advertising which was key. In other words they didn’t take his complaint or the fact it was live on the web for anybody to read seriously. They replied by explaining the bill but not on the matter of the advertising. Budget didn’t seriously engage the complaint or their customer when this should have been their first port of call.

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This will be the first in a series of Search Engine Optimisation posts related to travel in Ireland. If you have any suggestions or comments on this topic or future topics, as always we would be delighted to hear from you.
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