6. VIRGIN HOLIDAYS.

Dear Mr V Holly. (mention travel agencies loosing first)

I have presented Fiona with the mechanics of how the SIENNA Software will easily generate $140,000,000 profit will the niche tourism business over the next 5 years. For now please take it as read that that will happen.

The basic principal is we give 5,000 odd small local “Niche” travel companies the full power of a travel agent, great STO’s and improve each of there websites to be 10 times more informative than any Travel Agent. This will obviously cut, maybe severally cut Travel Agent market share but as you are the partner you will gain market share, considerably especially in the mid and high end sectors.

Before I go further I need to explain that the SIENNA Software is to be used to generate money for Charity and Good causes. So directly making money from SIENNA can not happen. But making money by using the software is allowed; in fact it’s the entire point. Also whilst the use of print media is generally against VIRGIN policy for ecological reasons, SIENNA will balance 2 fold by planting trees.

To put in a nut shell SIENNA will act as a GDS but providing full websites, marketing advice, customer relations tools and financial programme drummed strait into the hear of VIRGION MONEY. And as such we will be able to take a bigger margin 10% sometimes more.

We will leverage of your STO, where 40% is offered we will offer our affiliates 30%. But this is not how you make money; this is how SIENNA makes money.

The issue of SIENNA just being used as a reference and people booking direct is well covered.

The way VIRGIN HOLIDAYS benefits is two fold.

1st, I Give you the EXPERIACE AFRICA website and brand.

Then we start improving it by adding 500 or so new African sources of holiday experiences including Villa Rental companies, Travel ADS’s, travel groups, individual venues and Hotels, Car Hire and Flights from the GDS. Many of these should be approached at the Tourism Indaba mid May.

You can start trading as soon as the new website is created (2 or 3 months), if you want to apply VIRGIN HOLIDAYS marketing methods good for you, if not just wait for the magazine drop.

If we make the Indaba we should have connected enough affiliates to release our African bouquet to our network by September, by then we could have 500 maybe 1000 affiliates.

By releasing the Africa Bouquet we provide a DATA FEED to all their websites allowing them to replicate any parts of the Experience Africa website they want. This feed will be integrated into their websites so as to look and feel like their brand, there website visitors will presume it is their original content. At the same time the previously mentioned customer relations and financial modules will be released to help them manage and organise their business expansion.


To aid our new partners we will print about 500,000 magazines 250,000 will go to our affiliates individually branded for them to distribute to their client base. The other 250,000 will be labelled Experience Africa and distributed by Conde Nast and Placed in prestigious venues. An example of the last magazine I distributed with Conde Nast is enclosed, this magazine resulted in a Villa being rented for 2.5M rand for a month and BULGARI contact us offering about R1,000,000 to sponsor our next addition. And this was just 28,000. 250,000 magazines backing up the Experience Africa website will generate a lot of enquiries.

Weather or not to use the VIRGIN Brand is up to you, I read in Sir Richards’s book that sometimes VIRGIN companies remain underground.  In my opinion it is best to keep underground, let the website and call centre take the enquiries and VIRGIN HOLIDAYS close the clients. Of course any on line accommodation bookings, package holidays or flights booked is just money in the bank.
Direct VIRGIN Branding could undermine the fairness of the magazine drop’s. As things stand, or how I would like people to think they stand is that Experience Africa is an independent company that has invested time and effort into making the SIENNA system, they don’t get preferential STO’s or any other cheats from SIENNA but and seeing as the magazines are not really a cost then there is no problem, experience Africa are just the best in Africa at using the system.

At the same time as Experience Africa is being made 2 other Bouquets will be created. “World Wide Villas” and “Conde Nast top 20 destinations in the world. You will need to buy relevant domain names. Then the website gets populated with content, so again the first developing website will be owned by VIRGIN HOLIDAYS again do your relevant marketing and wait for the 250,000 magazines to be distributed.

Then again, then again. In a year I’d hope to launch 6 bouquets with VIRGIN owning the most prolific websites.  With 1,250,000 million magazines and a Coffee table book distributed.

The next year 12 bouquets will be featured and each month one released another magazine.

2nd with the buyer power of SIENNA you will be able to have the best STO’s of all your competitors, that combined with VIRGIN AIRWAYS will make you the most price competitive operator.

It will not take long to realise that the SIENNA system will decrease market share in general of travel agents, but that cant be stopped one way or the other this is going to happen. but with the SIENNA flagship websites generating many additional enquiries particularly high end enquiries VIRGIN HOLIDAYS will be the one travel agent to benefit.

Of course if you want to use the VIRGIN brand you can, there’s a lot more to consider. And plans don’t get made they develop. You could for instance cut your margin or offer 10% to SIENNA good causes.

3. I don’t really want to go into to much detail about S-World. It’s a different phase of the project. Like the financials please just accept for now that it can be done and will be done.