Unless you've been living a sealed carboard box for the last week, you won't have missed the revelations about the News of the World and in the last few days, more about the whole of News International. In my view, what they have done is simply scandalous for all sorts of reasonsand there have been thousands, if not millions of people commenting on that.

I want to take a slightly diffierent view and see what the impact will be on the travel market?

There were 3 travel companies who used NOTW as part of their advertising strategy; Virgin Holidays, Easyjet and Co-op Travel. They weren't the biggest spenders, but I have no doubt that it was a good strategy because of the demographic and large circulation of the NOTW. It seems inevitable that News International will start another Sunday tabloid when the dust has settled, but in such a turbulent travel market, can they afford to wait?

My view is that they will be affected, but that they will focus more on digital marketing and look to drive custom in that way. That also seems to be the view of people with far more insight than me. So what is the impact of that? To be honest, I don't know! What I'm hoping is that they won't embark on a cost-cutting exercise to enable them to increase their advertising spend.

Our recent experience is that safety checks and Health & Safety are not top on the agenda of most holiday companies. Of course, we only see the holidays that have gone wrong, but we also get a flavour for how holiday companies are dealing with things.  We have seen an emerging trend of holiday companies hiding behind 'local standards' and suggesting that it's ok for conditions and facilities to be sub-standard because that's what it is like locally. Whilst part of the fun of going to different places is to experience the culture and enjoy the differences, that doesn't mean everything can be run down and improvements and investment ignored.

It is really important that holiday companies don't lose sight of the quality of their product in tough times because if they do, they are likely to promote holiday compensation claims and the bad publicity that comes with it. After all, we have all seen the power that Twitter and other social networking sites have now.