This interesting initiative reinforces the trend of hotels and restaurant’s guides to publish more and more of their contents and their offers through new media.

The app itself is pretty good, and you will notice the polish design according to the association guideline : Luxe and simplicity. 480 destinations from 56 countries are listed and you can search by using the localization from the iPhone or search by name. Each destination is very documented with full list of services available and prices. You can even book..by telephone !.

Well it’s not really what we would expect from an iPhone app where we would have appreciate the possibility to book online directly from the app. This would have made this app not only a basic destination directory but also a useful app.

15% of its staff were laid off and “Cut the cost” policy has been setup. Gordon Ramsay said to Fox News :

Heading out of global economic downturn has been tough but for me it has also been a breath of fresh air. The industry was getting far too arrogant, they weren’t respecting customers enough and they forgot the customers were king. Customers just disappeared. Those that were in the restaurants weren’t drinking wine. All were on tap water. Then we had a huge downturn, Monday to Thursday. Your staff costs are the same, your running costs are the same. It was a nightmare.

Well what can we learn from that ? As many other industries confronted with a downturn, key to recovery is a matter of quick reaction. Earlier the better. These decisions might be painful especially when lay-offs are involved but so necessary to make the business running.

No doubt the banks are on the tail of debtors. its remind us of Anthony Worrall Thompson who did not manage to get a £200,000 loan from his bank and was forced to go into receivership. Banks are short of liquidity and it has a huge impact on the Restaurant group’s growth most of which rely on loan.

With more than a billion pages on Google, Millions of blogs, and hundreds of thousands tweets, fooding on internet is more than a popular topic. It’s not really new you would say and You’re right. In 2004/2005 some blogs became really popular attracting huge traffic as Pascale Weeks’s blog C’est moi qui l’ai fait :

C’est moi qui l’ai fait is born the 2nd of march 2004 while a sabbatical break. In addition to my passion for cooking, I found out a real pleasure writing about recipies and taking food photography. One year later I decided to quit my job at IBM after 17 years to become a full time food writer.

This blog is now live and we gonna talk here about our own experiences, about recipes, restaurants, good deals and good meals and all this with one and unique leitmotiv : To enjoy it as much as a good meal !