Hargreaves told Lucy that he was inspired by the way Toyota does business, which reminded me of this 100% solid-gold brilliant episode of US radio show This American Life.

It follows GM's attempts to learn from the Japanese car manufacturer, which culminated in the doomed NUMMI joint venture.

Lots of stuff in there about Toyota's culture and practices. Not all of it is directly related to what Hargreaves is talking about, but it's a worthwhile listen on its own terms.

That 'PTF' is an act of grotesque self-pity, and is best treated by a slap round the chops, is by the by - people still feel it, and it's still a need state. Marketers know about it, and about the attendant desperation to get your next trip in the diary.

As a party of skiers/snowboarders we were likely to repeat the same category of trip next year, and that makes us a particularly tempting target - we got 'See-you-next-time?' emails within a few days of coming home.

But there are other approaches for other types of business. Both the conversation and the WorldHum article reminded me of this throwaway detail from a story about members of Elite's Ethos luxury division 'getting creative' during the worst of the downturn:

I arrange many group cruises and would normally give them a bottle of wine. However, this time I ­arranged for a 'welcome home' carrier bag containing milk, bread, butter, eggs, tea and coffee. The response I received was phenomenal. (Marion Owen, owner of Marion Owen Travel.)

I don't know if that'd cure my Post-Trip Funk, but it's great relationship-building. I remembered it 12 months later, and all I did was read the story...

"But as often happens as companies grow, Blockbuster concentrated on perfecting its existing service while beating competitors offering the same instead of looking into ways that outsiders might destroy its business model altogether..."

Good spot by US travel marketing blogger Bill Geist, who has a nice phrase for Blockbuster's blindness to the rise of Netflix: 'ignoring the Borg at the door'.

He said: "Today you can book and pay for a holiday online in minutes. Why can't you do that for a blue badge for a disabled person? With MyGov you will."

MyGov, part of the current government's Digital Britain initiative, is intended to provide every UK citizen with their own password-protected home page, from where they can access all government services.

The site will allow Brits to "manage their pensions, tax credits or child benefits; pay their council tax; fix their doctors or hospital appointment and control their own treatment; apply for the schools of their choice and communicate with their children's teachers; or get a new passport or driving licence," he claimed.

The Digital Britain strategy is being run by Martha Lane-Fox, co-founder of lastminute.com.

Martin Cowen

I COLLECT LOST LUGGAGE, PHOTOGRAPH IT, AND THEN TRY TO FIND THE OWNERS.

IT'S A LITTLE ODD BUT NOT AS ODD AS STAMP COLLECTING, JUST A LITTLE HARDER TO FIND STORAGE SPACE.

• ABTA axes professional development role in restructure, or
  
• Keith Richards to leave ABTA
  

The key points...

• 0.35 - Acknowledges faults, and apologises.
• 0.55 - Indicates that he has talked to customers personally.
• 1.17 - Introduces details of the failings identified in the review, breaking them down into 'passenger care', 'communications' and 'resilience'.

• 2.20 - Assures us that the review's recommendations will be carried out.

Your thoughts?

The poll itself is basically sound. Survey of Facebook users, carried out on Facebook, covering the standard 1,000-person sample size. Fine.

But there's sleight-of-hand in the press release: 1,000 Facebook users become 'the Facebook Generation'.

'Generation' is a bit of a fuzzy word, inviting you to assume that what is true of users of a particular website is true of an entire age demographic.

It's also simply the wrong word, since stats indicate that Facebook is increasingly multi-generational, and there's no indication that the poll was targeted to a particular age group.

If anything, the assumption should be that only 14% of a fairly broad swath of the UK use high-street agents.

But that doesn't work either, since Facebook has (acc. to April 09 figures from O'Reilly Research) 18m users in a population of over 60m - and the very fact that poll respondents are Facebook users means they're the sort of people who are likely to book online.

So why publish the story at all? Well, because the point about Facebook users is useful on its own terms. If you're an agent and you're considering Facebook as a marketing tool, figures about its users' buying habits are going to help you make a decision.

Everybody loves a trend story. But sometimes extrapolation just muddies things up.

(NB: But it's fine if you're honest about it.)

One, they tell a good story.

Two, they work despite trashing a few Twitter orthodoxies - it's quick-fire first-person stuff without much engagement.

Storytelling, as you'll have guessed from the post title, is something I never thought Twitter was all that good at. But I followed this eagerly - and although it doesn't relate a very pleasant experience, the sense of camaraderie and relief in the final tweets makes it inspiring as a mini-travelogue.

All comes from an award-winning journalist (Andrew Evans) who is travelling to Antarctica by bus for National Geographic.

• Staff 23%
• Sales leads 33%
• Hours in the day 44%
  

As I did last year, I'm rounding off with a quick look at the points where our supplier awards and the Associated Newspapers-sponsored Consumer Awards overlap...

Favourite Cruise Company

• Consumers: P&O Cruises
• Agents: Fred Olsen, Royal Caribbean, Silversea and Hurtigruten

Favourite Airline

• Consumers: Virgin Atlantic
• Agents: Voted Virgin Atlantic best scheduled airline to US/Canada

Emirates, BA and Monarch took the other categories.

Best Rail Operator

• Consumers: Virgin Trains
• Agents: Eurostar

Favourite Hotel Chain

• Consumers: Holiday Inn
• Agents: RIU Hotels

European short break provider

• Consumers: Eurostar
• Agents: Thomas Cook

Long-Haul Operator

• Consumers: Kuoni
• Agents: Kuoni

As Robin said in Friday's comment piece, we can't know how the peaks period has gone until proper numbers start coming in a few weeks down the line.

But we do know that, even as Travel Weekly goes to print and people start opening the digital book, the picture is slowly becoming clearer.

So a situation like the peaks period is particularly interesting and challenging to web editors. It cries out to be covered 'live', but there's no event to focus attention - as there is when, say, the BBC does live text coverage of a test match.

I'm reminded of Farmers Weekly, who were across the hall at TW's old publishing house. Their equivalent is the annual harvest, and last year they invited readers to anonymously submit their location and progress. All that went into a broad 'heat map' that showed how the harvest was going in each region of the UK.

Problems with that? Of course. It makes demands of readers. Do they have time to submit data to their trade media? Do they want to?

I'm idealistic enough to think the answers to those questions don't have to be 'no', especially when there's a big shared experience involved.

When snow started falling over the UK on December 17, even the most casual Twitter users were adding #uksnow and a postcode to their tweets, and gabbling excitedly about Ben Marsh's brilliant snow map.

I had an airport pickup to do the following day, and I'm not kidding when I tell you that was more helpful to me than the BBC and Met combined.

For now, I'm just running a peaks poll - and it's gratifying to see that early results do reflect 'cautious optimism', with 59% seeing good summer sales (winter's a different story).

But could we have done more? If Travel Weekly tried to track the peaks period with your help, would you participate?

This is just to aggregate some of the tweets I've spotted - I'm not using a feed as the keyword  'Holiday Options' is likely to pull in a lot of generic travel posts.

Holiday Options has gone bust. Shame.
@lisaminot

RT @lisaminot Holiday Options has gone bust... shame > Agree. They had nice program 2 interesting dests like Croatia, Azores, Slovenia, etc
@alastairmck

bit slow on the uptake but just been told Holiday Options has gone into administration. Shame, really nice company.
@steveody

Oh dear, another bites the dust, so sad.
@lynnerosie

"A big shame about Holiday Options, many satisfied customers over the years. Who now for Croatia? Not many specialists left to sell"
@selectworld

"Can anyone say what's happening with Hidden Croatia? ... Sad, as both v nice to deal with"
@catherinemurp

"Sad about Holiday Options failure, I quite liked them"
@juliedurrans

"Can't believe that Holiday Options has gone under!"
@baldwinstravel