Parnell has a lot of travel agencies.

Sancho, STA, Flight Centre, and my favorite chain, House of Travel. It’s kind of a cute name for a travel agency.

It makes you think of drinking cheap wine in the open doorway of a freight car. The contradictory pair of “house” with “travel” must be what they call Kiwi Humor. It has to be. What is a “house of travel”, except maybe a caboose, a recreational vehicle or a snail. Talk about your narrow market focus.

In fact I can’t think of anyone in this day and age of speedy travel through an advanced transportation infrastructure who would even dream of going by snail.

They’re going by plane, naturally. And because of that, the travel agencies are going after their money.

There’s a poster hanging in every one of the agencies’ windows, beckoning one to hurry up and visit Europe. Why? Do they think I’m going to make an impulse purchase of an expensive holiday in Venice? I’m lucky when I can afford to top-up my bus pass.

The weird thing about the agencies competing for your custom is they all use the exact same picture poster. They just print different messages, tailored to their intended customers.

Here’s the first example.

If you’re having trouble reading the material, don’t worry.  I enhanced the photo. Now it’s legible.

The competitors are obviously competing for different parts of the market.

When it comes to catering to customer preferences–coach, deluxe, holiday tours–this next agency knows exactly what it’s doing

Down the road, there’s this clever twist which is advertising two destinations, in a quite subtle way.

Finally, we all know that Venice is sinking. And the last agency is using that fear to entice their customers.