We’re seeing some great new applications coming out that connect to Xero.  The lastest is POS provider Vend. We’re really excited to see some great new solutions that just make business easier …

Also we’ve been doing a huge amount of work to take the stress out of the upcoming GST changes. You can see what we’re doing here:

It’s time to ditch that horrible old desktop software and make the upgrade to Xero your last upgrade ever.

You can talk to our local Hawkes Bay partners, or try Xero for free at www.xero.com.

Commercial over.  Thank you and good night.

www.innovation.org.nz

They’ve managed to get some good speakers like Sam Morgan, Steve Joyce, Sam Knowles and Craig Neville-Manning from Google so will be well worth a trip over.

If you haven’t been up there I’d suggest introducing yourself to Luke and the team.  We do a number of Xero events in the Hastings office and around the other regions.

Tonight was hosted by Eclypse, a new company helping schools with their accounting and administration.  (No website yet, go George go.) We had a number of schools along to talk about Xero and I was delighted to hear how much easier schools are finding it to manage their financials.

Merynn, Jennifer and Maria from Eclypse are good examples of the many new businesses we’re seeing where passionate and experienced people are peeling out of established companies to do their own thing and using technology to define a new service.  These types of consulting and service firms provide real value. Being able to leverage technology means they can operate from anywhere.  It’s great to see.

Really good to see mid winter events like this happening and such a great turnout. If you haven’t tried the duck at Pipi yet I can totally recommend it. Yum!

Also the cheap flights are much less business friendly than they used to be.  So even a 30% discount to a massive fare doesn’t do it for me. It’s still a punitive fare.

I’m the target market for this  product and I’m not keen at all.  It seems that Air New Zealand is getting the best of both worlds.  Cash up front, but a price they can set at anytime in the future. Doesn’t seem like a win win to me.

AirNZ is protesting strongly about Auckland Airport buying Queenstown Airport because Airport companies crank up all prices and making flying more expensive.  Well this is the next step in the chain.  Expensive flights slow economic development and increase the friction of doing business out of region.

The number one thing for getting people out of region to relocate here is price certainty of flights.

Starfish does’t deliver that.  Anyhoo, here is the full release.  What do you think?

Massive 30% discount for frequent regional flyers

Air New Zealand has further boosted its commitment to regional New Zealand, by offering the opportunity for frequent flyers to slash the cost of their travel.

The airline’s new Starfish Card will see customers receive an automatic 15% or 30% discount on all regional airfare types, including the ridiculously low grabaseat fares.

The new Starfish card, which is valid for one year from date of purchase, will initially be on sale for a two month trial period.

“Our frequent regional flyers have told us they’d like the option of getting even more value for money in recognition of their travel needs,” says Air New Zealand Group General Manager Australasia Bruce Parton.

“I’ve visited customers in twenty towns and cities over the past couple of months listening to this feedback and as a result at the end of next month we will launch the new Starfish card giving big discounts.”

This is one of several regional customer initiatives that the airline will be rolling out over the coming year.

“The Starfish card will appeal to the tens of thousands of customers who travel frequently to and from regional New Zealand. Small to medium businesses will find this card particularly attractive as they start to recover from the effects of the global recession,” says Mr Parton.

“We expect to see stimulation in demand as customers maximise the opportunity to travel at lower costs than ever before.”

Frequent flyers can purchase from two discount options, costing $200 for a 15% discount or $800 for a 30% discount, which applies across all regional airfares including grabaseat, Smart Saver and Flexi Plus fares.

The product will be available for purchase exclusively online through www.myairnz.co.nz from the end of August, with all flight bookings made by logging onto your account via www.airnewzealand.co.nz or www.myairnz.co.nz automatically receiving the discount for one year.

The Starfish card applies to Air New Zealand regional flights, which are defined as originating from or departing to the regional airports:

Blenheim
Gisborne
Hamilton
Hokitika
Invercargill
Kaitaia
Kerikeri
Masterton
Napier
Nelson
New Plymouth

Palmerston North
Rotorua
Taupo
Tauranga
Timaru

Wanaka
Wanganui
Whakatane
Whangarei
Westport

Services between the main city ports of Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, Christchurch and Queenstown are not included.

“The 15% discount card will provide value for money for those regional customers who currently spend more than $1,400 per year with us, or for those who spend more than $4,000 per year the 30% discount card will be ideal,” says Mr Parton.

Anyone can purchase the card and non-Airpoints members will automatically be provided with an Airpoints membership with the joining fee waived.

Customers will continue to earn Airpoints and Status Points in the same way they do today, based on the fare purchased, and Airpoints can be used to purchase flights.

Ironically I’m writing this from the Koru Lounge in Wellington on the way to Oz and was greeted personally by the fantastic Caroline with an upgrade as they have a full flight. I love Air New Zealand!

For new companies, this approach of being a case study for a larger company is a great way to get known.  We do a few. It’s worth approaching some of your big suppliers if you think you have a good story to tell.

Well done Hamish and the team from Furnware.  Nice one.

It must have been 2 or 3 years ago when Tauranga made it to the big time and got inserted between Hamilton and Wellington on the big city run through. Now I have nothing against Tauranga, but WTF!

Looking at Wikipedia, Napier and Hastings is bigger than Tauranga.

Now maybe they look at Napier and Hastings separately, but Tauranga hardly has its hands clean with that two city Tauranga and the Mount thing going on. They may have even snuck in Te Puke. No doubt someone at Tauranga did a great job getting reclassified.

Surely this is a wrong that must be righted!

I may be the last person in the world, but last week I stumbled onto Broken Bells.  The whole album is great.  Here is a couple of live performances on Letterman and Kimmel to give you a taste.

Anyone else have some recommended music most of us probably haven’t heard of?

They have a nice referral model where you can invite new people to DropBox and earn extra storage. Very clever (and why I’m posting this).

DropBox is great if you’re doing sales because you can have all your collateral and files available anywhere, even if they’re huge. We share a DropBox folder amongst our sales team so they always have the latest updates on their laptops.

DropBox seems to be the easiest way to get files onto an iPad. GoodReader has DropBox support so that you can simply drop a pdf in from your PC and pull it into GoodReader from anywhere.

Any other cloud products you’d recommend?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NWHJMJ7

I think that most of us are very proud of Air New Zealand.  It’s an admired company for almost all New Zealanders.  We want to support it.

But I disagree strongly with the approach of a upfront fee, to get a discount.  The survey tests a few different combinations of this approach.  I feel that a percentage discount is meaningless as I have no idea what the real fares are.

It’s all about planned price certainty so that we can make decisions on where we live and work. For a commuter, the magic price is $99 exclusive of GST. At that level I think people would fly. No brainer. At that level people choose to live and work from the Bay. I’d buy 50 a year, up front in cash. The variable is what are the booking rules to enable that price point.

For a business to look at selling out of region, maybe they want to schedule a regular monthly trip.  Maybe it’s $149 and they buy 20. That allows businesses to budget for travel costs and make the big a decision to address a market out of region.

I therefore think the proposed pricing approach is wrong. Discounts are meaningless as they don’t provide budgeting certainty.

What do others think?