Website update: May 2022
Well that went fast…it’s been a whole year since I began this website and it certainly feels like a very different world. Back one year ago, we were just exiting our third lockdown here in the UK - outdoor eating only, the rule of 6, masks everywhere. Today almost feels like its 2019, which is welcome even if the government should be taking more anti-Covid measures. Regardless, I thought this would be a good moment to provide a website update on the eve of its first anniversary.
Travel is most certainly back. Since October, I’ve been able to document and cover my trips across the globe including:
Paphos, Nicosia and Limassol, Cyprus
Barcelona and Madrid, Spain
Copenhagen, Denmark
Malmo, Sweden
Oslo, Norway
Helsinki, Finland
Bangkok and Koh Samui, Thailand
I’ve had the opportunity to cover some great hotels and airlines in the process - including Singapore Airlines fifth freedom flight between Copenhagen and Rome, Finnair’s new Air Lounge business class as well as British Airways Club Suite from Rome to London. My trip to Bangkok, in which the testing was particularly stressful but worth it to visit Asia again, was paid for by Scoot - a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines (Economy review | Premium Economy/Scoot Plus review). While some reviewers will not accept ‘free’ trips, I am happy to do so with caveats (which you can read in this article here). My primary motivation was not actually to try Scoot Long Haul or to get a free trip, while both are positive, the actual reason was the website exposure. Site visits have gone from an average of 2000 guests per month to 10,000, thanks to the coverage afforded by Scoot through their social channels. This is a real achievement considering I started from zero this time last year and be sure that despite the flight being paid for, the coverage was completely honest and open.
Recently, I published my first YouTube trip report video of the new Finnair Air Lounge Business Class from Helsinki to London. This was a great flight and I felt it would be a positive to share the experience in both video and written form. The reception has been great for a channel with less than 10 subscribers prior to publishing - achieving 10,000+ views and adding 100 subscribers in the process. I don’t plan to publish on YouTube all too often, mostly because of the amount of time it takes to process and edit videos. If you didn’t know, I have a full time job as a marketing manager at a media technology company so finding the time to write articles as well as videos gets a bit too much quickly. Going forward, I plan to continue publishing three times per week (excluding UK bank holidays) and publish one video every 4-8 weeks. The videos will only ever be things that I find interesting - for example, a short flight within Europe is a bit boring but a long haul flight even in Economy could be a fun watch. If you haven’t seen my Finnair video, you can take a watch below.
One apology from me is the slightly patchy publishing over the past couple of weeks. As I write this, I’m returning from a business trip to the USA which involved very long days but some great flights along the way. From this trip, I covered:
Aer Lingus AerSpace on A321neo from London Heathrow to Dublin
Air France European Business Class from Dublin to Paris CDG
Air France La Premiere First Class lounge and flight from Paris CDG to San Francisco (video to be published)
Alaska Airlines A320 from San Francisco to Las Vegas
Delta Airbus A220 and A320 from Las Vegas to San Francisco via Salt Lake City
Delta Boeing 737-800 from San Francisco to Salt Lake City
KLM Boeing 787-9 new World Business Class from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam (video to be published)
KLM E190 European Business Class from Amsterdam to Dublin
Premier Inn, Dublin Airport
YotelAIR, Paris CDG Airport
Hilton at Las Vegas Resorts World
The Alton by Kimpton, Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco
The Clancy, Autograph Collection by Marriott, San Francisco
Wow. That’s a lot when you see it written down but there will be lots of great content to come from this trip and has been worth going round the houses to get to and from the work event in Vegas.
I’ll now have around 2 months back in the UK before my next adventure… The Philippines!
This will include:
Lufthansa Intra-European Business from Stockholm to Brussels via Frankfurt
Thai Airways Business Class from Brussels to Bangkok (video to be published)
Gulf Air from Bangkok to Singapore via Bahrain (video to be published)
Flight from Singapore to Manila
Singapore Airlines Suites/First Class on the A380 and Business Class on the A350 from Manila to Frankfurt via Singapore(video to be published)
This will be a very fun trip - since it will be my first time visiting my partner’s country, and certainly a lot better value from money than the US. The fun thing will be that you can now do this type of journey without having to worry about testing as long as you are vaccinated - this will certainly feel like 2019 once again.
Beyond then, there’ll certainly be other trips on the horizon but they’re yet to be finalised. It’s great to see things getting easier again and being able to travel with less stress.
On the technical side of the website, I moved it across to Squarespace around August time. I am quite happy with it thanks to the design-centric style of the service over Wordpress - it’s certainly not perfect though and the only way to get the improvements I’m looking for is to move to the higher package… I do plan to spend some time soon improving navigation whether that is easier access to airlines reviews within the menu or searching function which doesn’t yet exist.
Thanks for reading these ramblings. If you’d like to keep up to do with my regular content, which resumes on Monday, then do subscribe to my email newsletter below:
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I appreciate all your readings of the website and for following my journey on building this website.
Callum
