Mr Cameron Goes To Europe………
With apologies to the original title – “Mr Deeds goes to town” (Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur 1936). I have noticed there have been a number of film title analogies over the past few months in these blogs ! I was in Berlin last month meeting with Klaus Juhl who runs RDO Germany in Berlin and we had a couple of useful meetings, one with Michael Rabe who is the Secretary General of BTW, which represents the travel and leisure industry in Germany, of which RDO is a member, and we also had a very useful meeting with an MP member...
The End Of April…. Hold The Front Page…..
Anyone who is a film buff will remember the 1974 Billy Wilder version of the 1931 film – The Front Page. The ’74 film starred Walter Matthau as the Editor and Jack Lemmon as his star crime reporter. It was originally a successful stage play and the fact it has been filmed I believe four times is testament to its success, needless to say I believe that Matthau and Lemmon produced by far the best and funniest version. The only reason I mention this, is because when it gets this late in the month and I haven’t written the monthly Blog,...
Did It All Change As Predicated?
Even if this gets put up on our website on in the first working-days of March, I will count it as February’s blog and if so I have managed so far to keep to my resolve of 1 blog a month – not sure anyone will be that interested but it leaves me with a warm glow if nothing else! These have been fraught days in our household, with A2 mocks being sat by the youngest member of our family, who decided last Friday evening that his eyes needed testing as he was having trouble seeing things on the board at...
What Colour is January…..?
Strange question you may think. I understand some people attribute colours to days of the week – Monday – White etc. This led me to thinking what colour would months be? From my point of view January would definitely be Grey. No surprise there you may think – certainly in Northern Europe it can be a month of not only grey skies and cold weather, but in the UK certainly a time for paying bills and meeting the demands of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs! Ah Joy! Hence the grey. Once I started thinking about this, I found however that...
And So This Is Christmas…..
“Another year older …” (with acknowledgements to John Lennon), yes it’s that time of the year again, the Christmas trees are in the windows of our neighbours houses (we are lagging a bit behind this year) and Jonathon Ross (a local) has switched on the lights in “the Village” as we who live in NW3 like to call Hampstead. Enough of this nostalgia – just thought I would set the scene for a bit of a review of what has been somewhat of a roller coaster of a year for RDO and its members. Where do we start – with the...
RDO – Too Much Enforcement?
Without pre-empting the content of this week’s session at RDO5 “Self Regulation –too tight or too loose?” nor indeed the Breakout Session “Mitigating the Risk”- this topic has been under consideration these last few days as we look at the budget for 2015 – as always, a balancing act for any trade association between what we would like to achieve and what we believe members are prepared to contribute. No-one can pretend the media coverage this year in the UK, Germany and Scandinavia has been particularly good, indeed one could say it has been a bit of an unmitigated disaster, but...
The Long March
In October 1934, it is claimed that Chairman Mao as he was to become, was one of two eventual leaders, who lead what was then the Red Army from the south of China, North and West over some of the most difficult terrain in China to re-group and escape almost certain defeat and destruction at the hands of the nationalists, under General Chiang-khai shek. The journey covered some 9000 kilometres and took 367 days or thereabouts. It became known in Chinese history as “The Long March” and was reputed to be the turning point in the fortunes of the Chinese...
You Win Some, You Lose Some and a Few Rotten Apples
I was reflecting on this phrase early January, as we have been in discussion with two fairly long-standing RDO members in different parts of Europe. One was worried about losing membership through difficulties with its bank that had made payment of levies and fees difficult. The other member had changed its ownership recently and the new owners didn’t want to remain in membership, as they couldn’t see the value of being an RDO member from their point of view. I am pleased to say that we managed to sort out the financial issues relating to the first developer and he will...
Some thoughts from Abroad………
In the last couple of weeks, I have been reviewing the RDO Budget for 2014 along with Nikkie Yeaman, before we present it to our esteemed Treasurer. In the course of this I have been meeting with Klaus Juhl who represents RDO in Germany and of course Maria Rodriguez who looks after our Spanish members and represents RDO in Spain. When I go to Berlin, I am always slightly surprised at how small an airport Berlin Tegel is for the airport of the capital of an economy as important as Germany. There is in fact another airport serving Berlin – Schoenfeld...
What a difference a year makes………..
With apologies to Jamie Cullum who wrote the lyrics for the song “What a difference a day makes”. This song title came into my head after Chris Emmins (Kwikchex) and I had made a presentation to the staff of the UK and Scandinavian European Consumer Centres Network[i] (ECC-Net) on who RDO represented (the best in timeshare in Europe) and what we were doing to combat the fraudsters in Europe (through RDO Enforcement and the Timeshare Task Force). The reason I thought about this is that it is barely a year since RDO embarked on its strategy of meeting consumer issues head-on...
