The summer is over, the leaves are beginning to turn a golden brown, the kids are heading back to school, that summer vacation is a distant memory. What does that mean? It means that it’s time to start thinking about skiing this winter!

Europe had an absolutely fantastic ski season last year – the best in a long time, with early and deep snow falls right across the Alps. Let’s hope that the upcoming season is just as good.

To help you prepare for your winter vacation, read on for our guide to the top 10 European ski resorts this winter.
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Over at Search Engine Land Michael Gray has a fantastic piece on the travel industry on Twitter.  This is the most complete list of service providers that I’ve seen for travel services, including airline travel and car hire.

Of course, don’t forget to check out vakobi’s twitter feed also.

Vakobi now has it’s very own facebook page.

There’s not much there (yet), but do be sure to check it out, and become a fan of it. We’ll be developing some cool features for facebook in the next while.

Vodafone UK have launched an interesting mashup between Twitter and Google Maps, called #ukholmaps. It shows the holiday destination plans for UK-based twitter users.

Although the number of links is pretty small still, it’s interesting that there are relatively few planned holidays to Ireland from the UK. The UK, of course, would traditionally be one of the biggest markets for in-bound tourism to Ireland, but with the recent devaluation of Sterling against the euro, that has certainly been hit quite hard.

Looking for a new challenge?

Looking for a business opportunity, not just another job?

If so, then Vakobi might be the opportunity that you’ve been looking for.

What is Vakobi? Vakobi is start-up company with support from Enterprise Ireland based in Dublin but with global ambitions. We have developed an innovative approach to online holiday rentals, and we’re looking for a hot-shot online marketing guru to help us take Vakobi’s online presence to the next level. We’re looking for somebody to come on-board as a partner in the business.

Who are you? You’re an expert in all aspects of online marketing and promotion. You’re well versed in the latest trends in SEO, Google AdWords, website analytics, A/B testing, online brand awareness, viral marketing. You live and breath Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs. Ideally, you’ll have a background in tourism-related businesses. And most importantly, you’re looking for a significant challenge with a potentially huge reward at the end.

What’s on offer? We’re looking for a business partner, not an employee. We have invested significant funds already to develop Vakobi’s potential to where it is now, and we’re looking for you to invest your time and expertise to help us realise that potential. The successful candidate will be offered a significant equity stake and directorship in the business, and will have control of all aspects of marketing and promotion for Vakobi.

If this looks like the opportunity that you’ve been waiting for, please send us your CV at job@vakobi.com or visit us at www.vakobi.com/jobs.

Via Venture Hacks, I came across a great post on how to prepare a demo of a web app from the Wufoo guys.

Very interesting – must put it to work for my vakobi demo.

Vakobi is looking to recruit some super-sharp, hungry business development execs based in Ireland and France (Haute-Savoie and Cote d’Azur).

These positions are, initially at least, three month contracts, but we’re more than willing to extend them, if the candidates work out. The package will include a base salary, expenses and a generous commission.

If you’re interested, you should:

• have sales experience, and be comfortable cold-calling;
• have some experience in the holiday rental market, or some similar hospitality or tourism market;
• have your own transportation;
• speak fluent English and (if you’re applying for a position in France) French.

We’re willing to be flexible on locations, hours of work, etc. for the right candidate, although you will be expected to travel to potential clients on occasion.

Check out our jobs page for a more formal description, and email your CV to jobs@vakobi.com. At this time, we’re not looking to work with any recruitment agencies.

On Monday, I’m delighted to say that the main vakobi website came out of hiding, and launched.

Vakobi will have a number of outstanding benefits for property managers and letting agents:

• it’s a hosted service, so there’s no software to buy or manage – everything is done through the browser
• it’s free for property managers to use and list their properties on the system
• vakobi will take care of internet advertising of your property, through Google ad-words
• you are only charged a small commission for each booking taken
• you can track the bookings, availability, rental income, etc. of your units, so no more manual data entry into Excel
• for holiday makers, the system will accept credit card or PayPal payments, and provide automatic confirmation of their booking

We are now seeking property management companies and letting agents in Ireland and France to act as initial users of the system. Interested parties can register on the site, or can contact us directly for more details at info@vakobi.com.

After an overly long Summer hiatus, vakobi is finally getting ready to launch for real.

Keep an eye on the website over the next few weeks, as things start to happen.