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What we’re doing here at Head for Points during these strange days

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I thought it was worth getting a little introspective for a moment and giving you an update on what we’re up to here at Head for Points in these rather confusing times.

When coronavirus broke out we were a little unsure as to how it would impact the site.  Primarily we thought:

we wouldn’t have anything to write about, and

no-one would be reading it anyway

It turns out we were wrong.  Here are our page views for March:

This is 25% higher than our previous best month.  Obviously having a 31-day month helped a bit, but our coronavirus coverage has proved very popular.  We hit 99,164 views on one particular day – literally another 10 minutes and we’d have hit 100,000 for the first time.

We got lucky here.  This Twitter thread, for example, has Nomadic Matt – probably the biggest generalist travel blogger in the world – discussing his complete collapse in page views.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that revenue has obviously fallen sharply.  All of our direct-sell advertising has been pulled, and Google Adsense – which we use to fill the gaps – is down about 50% on a ‘pence per page’ basis.  You will have noticed that the travel ads usually served up by Adsense have been replaced by fairly random stuff.

The majority of the travel affiliate schemes have also been pulled so we won’t make anything on the bulk of the hotel or flight bookings made through the site for a few months.  The credit cards are still paying, but clearly few people are applying for cards which require £3,000 of spending in the next 90 days to trigger a sign-up bonus.

Please don’t feel sorry for us though.  We make good money when everything is going well and we can absorb this.

In terms of staffing, we are keeping the team (Rhys, Anika, Sinead) together on full pay – no furloughs.  I think if people are willing to commit their livelihoods to working for a small business like this then you should stand behind them.

We have temporarily dropped the WeWork office.  We didn’t have much choice, since we can’t access it and WeWork was not offering any rent reductions. It’s not as if they are going to relet our space in the interim.  Of course, whether WeWork survives is a different matter – apparently their rent bill on our building alone is £10m per year and business rates will be roughly similar ….

In terms of content, we intend to keep the ‘three articles per day’ structure.  It has been remarkably easy so far – in fact, we’ve had a bigger problem deciding what we can fit in over the last few weeks.  It seems to be quietening down a little now, so we can kick off with some new ideas we’ve been working on.  We have some interesting strands where we will want reader contributions and we will be running updated versions of our core reference articles, starting next week with the ‘Avios Redemption University’ series.

Thank you for your continued support of HfP and for sticking with us during a period when our content is skewed more towards general aviation and hotel news than loyalty deals.  The list of things we want to do and see when the skies reopen is growing weekly – a Royal Air Maroc flight review needs doing as they joined oneworld yesterday, for example – and hopefully we can do a massive catch-up during Quarter 3.  We’ll all be desperate for some time out of the house, that’s for sure.

Comments (87)

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  • Roger,* says:

    +1 to all of the above!

    Wasn’t there a hint of an ISA opportunity to come? Not long left now.

  • Sundar says:

    Thanks Rob and team and the extended HfP commentary community for keeping us informed and entertained !

  • Simon says:

    Great site and good luck. S

  • JImbob says:

    Thanks for the update.
    Do you think you will go back to WeWork once this is all over (assuming it’s still going) or have you all adapted so well to working from home, you’ll continue to do that?

    • Secret Squirrel says:

      Do small businesses really need office space these days?
      Technology allows seamless connectivity between others, maybe just the odd staff meeting at a cafe, your round Rob!
      Unless there is a purpose to get out of the house everyday…😅

      • Rhys says:

        I think people underestimate the ease of communication when sat in the same room vs when you have to email/phone/video call your colleagues. There’s a lot more ‘synergy’ in the former.

        • GTG says:

          Completely agree with this – some remote working is possible but you just cannot beat being in the same room as everyone or being able to just wander over and brainstorm with someone face to face

        • Mac D says:

          Yes their maybe more synergy but a lot of the time for many meetings are a waste of time and don’t achieve anything that couldn’t have been agreed over the phone or email beforehand.

          • Rob says:

            For people like us there is a big perception issue. Once I’d hired Anika and got a funky office in a funky building in the Square Mile, we started closing a lot more contracts and charging a lot more for them.

            Because the site looks a bit of a mess, we need to look professional in all other aspects. We are, as of today, the 317th biggest website in the UK but we don’t look it. We do at least try to act like it.

      • Mikeact says:

        Do large businesses need the space and people on site as well ? My eldest son is a senior manager at a leading supermarket business. He and all HO are working from home and have been the last few weeks or so. As he says, when we get back to normal, will we need to go back to the office life, as it’s working well from home…using Zoom and other face to face technologies ?

        • ChrisC says:

          Face to face is still important

          The casual comveration in the coffee room that connects two previously unconnected people that then generates solutions to problems or ideas to improve something or generate revenue.

          • Lady London says:

            Water cooler moments are really important.
            In one long contract I garnered info and the odd bit of influencing mostly in social spaces around the office. That’s the way a lot of places work now. It just can’t be done remotely.

    • Rob says:

      Yes, we’ll go back. With two kids our house is not really suited. We also have a lot of meetings.

      • Mac D says:

        If you obviously don’t have ‘private’ space at home then it makes sense for others that do have a private office at home then an office makes little sense

      • AJA says:

        Rob and all the team at HfP it’s good to hear that you’re managing. As for the return to an office because of meetings etc I have a feeling that the airlines are hoping the same since they rely on business travellers flying around the world to have those face-to-face meetings.

        What will be interesting is how many businesses will notice how business has been enabled and managed ok via video conference and team sharing software so that they curb their employees from doing so quite so frequently and how many of them will, in future, be required to travel at the back of the plane?

        • Rob says:

          Sending people to the back of the plane has been a trend for 20 years. I’m not sure I’d still have my ‘all business class, all the time’ and £350 per night (inflation adjusted) hotel allowance travel policy if I was still in private equity.

  • BJ says:

    Appreciate all your efforts. If things do become unsustainable on the financial side then please consider a subscription option (e.g., for access to comments, or perhaps voluntary) as I’m sure many of us would support this.

    • mvcvz says:

      Ditto

    • Anna says:

      +1, I’ve kept my subscription to RFF because it’s also a great resource and contemplating the possibility of future travel can be a great morale booster.

    • Harry T says:

      Strongly agree.

  • 1967stuart says:

    Love the site and it is one on the things keeping me sane at the moment

    p.s : you could always venture into selling fruit and veg boxes to fill the revenue gap like everyone else is doing at the moment 🙂

  • Simon says:

    I read via email mostly, but click on some if I’m struggling to read it or want to read comments. Do emails count towards views?

    • Rob says:

      Click throughs do.

      We do another 750,000 page view equivalents on top each month via opened emails.

      • Henrik1888 says:

        If your business can afford to do that, then that’s great. I find the follow up comment about the ‘why’ unnecessary and indirectly judgemental of businesses who have had to rely on the furlough scheme. I’m also not sure as to why its relevant on a travel blog to discuss the employment status of your staff. Now is not the time for anyone to be scoring ‘better boss’ points. Especially when these words could come back to haunt when we find ourselves in the exact same financial position 6 months from now which I would say is inevitable.

        • Mac D says:

          There is nothing wrong with furloughing workers, in the case for HFP and office is not essential

        • Olly says:

          Its funny how people can read something totally differently than what I do, and I suspect too how the author intended it. @Henrik read it in a completely mean spirited and negative way, like one upmanship on Rob’s part where as I didn’t!!

        • Rob says:

          We can carry on like this for the rest of 2020 and we’ll remain profitable for the year.

          You need to remember that many of the readers have met our team in person at our various events (over 2,000 people have come to our parties over the last 2 years) and even those who haven’t feel they know them through their work.

        • bigbossman says:

          We have met this people! We are interested!

        • Steveo_UK says:

          It’s a good article – I enjoyed reading it. You make a fair point about that particular paragraph though. I find 95% of the stuff on here well written and very good – there are few other places that can boast such a ratio. I’ve been taking and loving the same newspaper for years but I reckon I’m only ever happy with about 70% of the content. However, do expect to be crucified by HFP groupies if you ever have the audacity to criticise that 5%!

  • Secret Squirrel says:

    Nothing showing up at Hilton yet, thanks for your update Chris.

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