|
|
|
|
|
|
|  Overview | |
| | | DirectRooms is a discount travel company, with headquarters based in Phuket, Thailand.
DirectRooms is the trading name of Glad Enterprises Co. Ltd, incorporated in Thailand, January 2000. A separate UK office was established in 2003 to focus on European business development.
DirectRooms currently operates in 60 countries:
| | | | Africa: | | | | | | Asia: | | | | | | Middle East: | | | | |
| | |
| | | We enjoy over 900,000 visitors and in excess of 5,000,000 page views a month to the prime DirectRooms.com website. Our other websites generate another 300,000 visitors a month. This is primarily via organic search engine traffic and growing fast. Our customers come from all over the world, in order of volume: Europe, Asia and North America. This is very targeted traffic as we focus on obtaining higher conversion rates.
We have 3 full time directors, one Thai and two from the UK. Backgrounds are IT consultancy, software programming and customer services. We are not raw young things that see the Internet as a Pandora's box, goldmine etc, and just another vehicle to get to market. Our approach is realistic and not seen through rose tinted glasses. See our Management team profile
All development and support is carried out in house by a team of 8 programmer and software specialists.
We broke even (from revenue perspective) in our first year and are now trading profitably.
All investment is in house.
We operate a 24-hour, 7 day staffing of our reservations department.
Our Tourist Authority of Thailand (TAT) license number is 31-0399.
Our Association of Thai Travel Agents (ATTA) number is 02703.
| |
| | Business Resilience | |
| | | We own our offices, all office equipment, computers and vehicles. This keeps our operating costs low and allows us to deal with major incidents that affect the trave business (9/11, SARS, Tsunami, terrorism etc.).
We have over 100,000 US dollars as security bonds with our partners and suppliers.
We place a very high degree of importance to resilience into our business planning. We have in place the following:- Back up location with PC's installed to enable essential service to resume within 6 hours of a major disaster. We also have the ability to set up an alternative office that would be fully operational within 48 hours
- Back up on site servers and data storage facilities
- Off site back up data, stored on a daily basis
In the event of an incident occurring, that has a major impact on business (e.g. bird flu), we have finances available to function for over 9 months with a 60% reduction in business.
Spare staff would be employed to develop new websites and content that will enhance our position once travel returns to status quo. With modest staff redundancies our business could survive for 15 months with a 75% reduction in business.
| |
| | Staff | |
| | | We currently consist of a team of 85 full time and also 12 part time staff (as at July 2007).The staff turn over rate is a low 8% (in 2006).
We are committed to the well being of our employees, in every way. We are a multi racial and faith company and are proud of that. We actively support the ideal that there should be zero discrimination of people based on racial, religious, sexual orientation, disability, age or gender.
A social committee and budget is set up that organises department and company wide events. This is aimed at team building and generating a positive working environment. As a rapidly expanding company, we feel this is important for staff well being and productivity.
We have our own onsite canteen and cooks that provide meals and drinks free of charge to staff.
| |
| | General philosophy and attitude | |
| | | We are not a large corporate entity that worries about the company car, its share value or sucking up to the boss. We just want to do a good job, keep our customers happy, and enjoy the exciting and dynamic market that the Internet travel sector provides. Sure, we are here to make a profit, but our belief is that we should treat people fairly, with respect and how we want to be treated. We want to enjoy life, be proud of our company and the service we provide.
We are not raw young things that see the Internet as a Pandora's box, goldmine etc, but a new and exciting vehicle to present our products and services to a wider market. Our approach is realistic and not seen through rose tinted glasses.
It's important that the staff work as a close-knit team, where everyone contributes to the success of the business. Our success is dependant on all the staff, not just the management team. The directors make their own tea and coffee! A small, but important point.
Our growth will be based on what's achievable without compromising service. We enjoy and our passionate about our business and aim to be around a long time.
5% of profits will be donated to charity. A staff team is set up, chaired by a director, to define suitable recipients, distribute, monitor and manage this. The key principal being that this should be directed to the countries where we make profits, primarily to under privileged children. The principal objective being to 'give some thing back'
| |
| | The planet is messed up! | |
| | | The planet is messed up! We will do what is practical and feasible to ensure we do not impact the ecological problems that face us all. We will do what we can to minimize our waste, power consumption, and maximize our recycling opportunities. We aim to deal with companies that also have a conscious.
We are currently researching and working on our carbon neutral policy and this will be in place Q3 2007.
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
