Archive for the 'Emirates' Category

Was I wrong about Burger Fuel?

Published by Ben Kepes on May 5, 2008 in Emirates, Governance, New Zealand and Strategy. 1 Comment

This morning I read that Burger Fuel are expanding their operations outside of the current Australasian spread and have sold a franchise to Dubai. In the past I’ve been somewhat sceptical of Burger Fuel, both pre, during and post IPO. After reading the news I momentarily thought that perhaps I’d been a little hard on BF.

I was relieved (for my own sake entirely) to read this post by Dan who has spent time working in the UAE. Dan says that;

If the announcement had been that the first store was at Mall of the Emirates you know it would have done well because the food court there is always pretty busy. But instead the first store is at Festival City. I visited Festival City last August and it was a ghost town.

In defence of BF, Dan did go on to say that Festival City is not yet finished and may well prove more popular once it is. I remain firmly positioned on the fence, and leaning heavily towards the paddock of scepticism!

Share the love...
[Ask] [Bloglines] [BlogMarks] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Faves] [Google] [PlugIM] [Slashdot] [Sphere] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Email]

Dubai and Auckland airport….

Published by Ben Kepes on July 30, 2007 in Business, Economic Development, Efficiency, Emirates, Governance, New Zealand, Society, Strategy and Uncategorized. 3 Comments

Does anyone else out there cringe at the diatribe currently spinning around regarding the proposed acquisition of Auckland International Airport by a UAE based entity?

It seems to me yet another example of good old Kiwi tall poppy syndrome/xenophobia/parochialism.

For the record;

  • No one here complains when Graham Hart buys yet another Swiss packaging company
  • As far as I am aware no one in Switzerland complains when the above occurs either
  • The Emirati interests are well known for running businesses well
  • No one in their right mind would purchase an infrastructural enterprise like AIA and run it into the ground
  • We live in a global village

We can’t have it both ways - it’s either 70’s isolationism a la Muldoon or we go for the global village strategy - and if we go back to isolationism…..

No more widescreen LCD TV’s and cheap late model cars anymore….

Share the love...
[Ask] [Bloglines] [BlogMarks] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Faves] [Google] [PlugIM] [Slashdot] [Sphere] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Email]

Telecom help desk outsourcing

Published by Ben Kepes on July 11, 2007 in Branding, Business, Emirates, Governance, New Zealand and Strategy. 0 Comments

Lance had a great post over here with some tips for Telecom in their outsourcing venture.

While the situation is a little funny and many jokes will be made about it, the  Telecom situation does beg a few questions for businesses.

For years Dell has had all their call centre stuff out of India. I’ve purchased from Dell probably a dozen times and each time I’ve left very frustrated at the experience - terrible call quality, hard to understand operators, no understanding on their part of our geography etc etc.

I’d like to know what this change will cost Telecom and how much they are saving. Given that we currently pretty much have a duopoly  of telco’s in New Zealand they can probably get away with it. But what with naked DSL, number portability and other changes already made or soon to come - it seems a little short term of Telecom to make a change merely for cost savings.

And yet again I need to state that a real opportunity exists for a non price differentiated, value adding and service led telco

Share the love...
[Ask] [Bloglines] [BlogMarks] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Faves] [Google] [PlugIM] [Slashdot] [Sphere] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Email]

Emirates are really annoying me….

Published by Ben Kepes on June 30, 2007 in Business, Efficiency and Emirates. 4 Comments

And hopefully they blog scan regularly and will pick this up.

Late last year we took an extended family holiday and flew Emirates to Cairo and return. We’re Skywards members and so should have gained enough air points for a gratis trip to Australia.

About a month ago I rang Emirates (or their call centre anyway) to find out about our points. After waiting a significant time I finally talked to someone who told me that air-points statements are sent out twice a year and we should have ours in a few days.

For the record I have never received a Skywards statement (and it’s not almost a year since we travelled). Worse than this there is nowhere I’ve found to contact them about this, the lost password and lost username pages on the website don’t seem to go anywhere and the feedback form on their website redirects to the front page.

Sort it out Emirates! I want to know how many miles I’ve got, how far that will get me (us) and I want to use them. Please please sort out your systems and let me know when you have…..

Key words for a google search…. annoyed emirates airline service lack of air-miles website &%^^#@^(&(

PPS - If you want to fly us to Dubai to make up for the hassle and have me write a glowing article for Inspire magazine, I might consider it!

Share the love...
[Ask] [Bloglines] [BlogMarks] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Faves] [Google] [PlugIM] [Slashdot] [Sphere] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Email]