BARBARA CHARLTON Regular columnist Barbara was voted Most Helpful Travel Counsellor of the Year for two consecutive years
talking shop WISE COUNSEL A case of suppliers and demand There are times when we all feel like
there are not enough hours in the day, when that job on the ‘to do first thing in the morning list’ is still sitting there come the late afternoon. So when our head office announced
that it was bringing some training sessions to us,‘on tour’, and that the first session was on Time Management I signed up and met with 19 other southern-based Travel Counsellors. We enjoyed a great presentation by
Mick, of Crystal Cruises. Not only was it a valuable lesson in how to help ‘control time’, rather than letting time control us, but it also provided an opportunity to catch up with three of the business development executives that we regularly speak to on the phone and webcam. Training and learning featured quite high
in June and I also attended a really wonderful evening hosted by the Egyptian State Tourism Office. There were a number of excellent
suppliers in attendance, and the agents on hand were there because they wanted to be! We all came away better informed and a fair number of us won some of the best holiday prizes I have seen outside of the Travel Counsellors Annual Conference. There were five travel counsellors in the room, and I was happy that two of them won a trip! The sponsors were very generous with
their time and money and we will all be doing our best to return the favour by educating our clients on their products and services. I didn’t win a holiday but am very
interested in experiencing other areas of Egypt. Now is definitely a great time to go to Egypt, especially if you are visiting Cairo and want to see the pyramids and museum without a billion other tourists! The same goes for Nile cruises. Enquiries are coming in for really late
(but not cheap) summer holidays. Mine are varying from Australia to Russia as well as the ever-popular staples of Florida and European destinations. Prices seem to be holding, but I am sure
that people are booking later for reasons other than just getting a late deal. It may be that they are still waiting to see if we get a hot summer (looking less and less likely!) or that their jobs are safe, or perhaps they are just so busy they haven’t got around to booking yet.
“The sponsors at an Egyptian State Tourism Offi ce evening were very generous with their time and money and we will all be doing our best to return the favour by educating our clients on their products and services”
Clockwise from top: Barbara visited Thanda Private Game Reserve, South Africa, last month on a fam; Australia (Sydney) is proving popular with her clients; Now is a great time to suggest a Nile cruise
I was at a BNI meeting this month, and
we had a visitor from a company that sets up the automated phone systems! It was all I could do not to shoot him, as he described the ‘convenience’ for companies to have such systems in place, to direct people and even take automated payment details! Call me old- fashioned if you will, but do real people not do this much better? How many times have you called your
credit card company (or bank) to SPEAK to someone, only to find they have a voice recognition system in place that quite simply does NOT recognise your answers to those voice prompts? I made a decision a few years ago to change the bank that I had been with since leaving school to one that allows me to speak to a human who actually works in my local branch. If only tour operators (mentioning no names) could learn from customer feedback. As agents we are, after all, their customers as well as the direct public. I know for a fact that no-one actually enjoys pressing 'One for Reservations', 'Two for Admin,' etc, and then being put on hold listening to the same music over and over again for up to an hour.
Perhaps someone from such a company could explain to me where the customer service is in this? By the time you read this column I will
have returned from what I am sure will have been a fantastic educational trip to KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. With five other Travel Counsellors I
will have experienced the Midlands, The Drakensburg Mountains, Thanda Private Game Reserve, the St Lucia Wetlands, the coastal areas – and temperatures ranging from minus two to 28C! As I write, packing is proving a bit of a
challenge! I will report back next time on the highlights of the trip. As always, if any reader wants more detailed advice and some tips on this up-and-coming destination they should just ask me!
Happy summer selling! Contact Details
BARBARA CHARLTON Travel Counsellors UK 0845 0587 290
Barbara.charlton@
travelcounsellors.com www.travelcounsellors.co.uk/barbara. charlton
www.sellinglonghaul.com • July/August 2011 45
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52