CONFERENCE REPORT — ADVANTAGE 2015
Major investment in Travel Gateway
Advantage’s ‘one-stop-shop’ search-and-book tool Travel Gateway will receive “massive investment” this year to make it fit for purpose.
Lo Bue-Said said bookings
were up 15%, accounting for £2.5 million in revenue for the year to last September, but she admitted it was still small and “needs to get bigger”. She added: “It started out as just hotel aggregation, so it’s achieved a lot more than it set out to, but it needs significant investment. “We need to bring more
SuperBreak’s Graham Balmforth and his Shaun the Sheep flock
product and speed up the tech. We need to do a lot more to it to make it more engaging – and we are. “It has been in place for a
few years and the next step is to really grow it.”
Keynote speaker Jeremy Paxman
2016: Next year’s forum to take to the sea with MSC
The 2016 Advantage conference will take place at sea on board MSC Fantasia. Delegates will join the ship on April 16 for a four-night cruise, with calls in Barcelona, Genoa, Palma and Corsica. Mark Warner’s hosting of
ce requirements
there, whether it be changing commercial terms or introducing a freephone number for agents, for example. It’s actually becoming quite competitive.”
He said highly commended suppliers, and in particular those which had signed the Partnership Charter, were more heavily promoted by Advantage to members, and benefited from increased sales as a result.
this year’s conference last weekend was a first for the operator, with the all-inclusive Sea Garden Resort showcasing its product to the trade. Outgoing head of sales and
marketing Tim Locke said the operator would like the proportion of summer sales accounted for by agents to rise from 17% to 25% – the same level as in winter. He said Turkey was being
hit by the weak euro, making eurozone destinations more attractive, and its proximity to Syria, adding: “That’s why it’s so important doing this here. “Only agents can fix that – not marketing campaigns.”
Terms: Supplier deals claimed to be at least 1% better than rivals’
Advantage Travel Partnership claimed its commercial terms from suppliers were at least one percentage point better than rival consortia’s.
Managing director Julia Lo Bue- Said said: “We benchmark all the time and we are at least 1% better on terms than our competitors.” Commercial director John
Sullivan said the consortium had been shy in the past to boast about its claimed superior position, but added: “It’s time to be bold now. Some relationships we have nurtured with business partners far outweigh some of our competitors’.”
Lo Bue-Said said having critical
mass was important, so attracting new members was key. “We don’t actively target competitors, we just target the type of agents whom we think would be the right fit with the business,” she said. Lo Bue-Said said Advantage Managed Services could help attract members, and the group would be appealing to agents keen
John Sullivan
to concentrate on the customer- facing side of an agency. Business development director
David Moon said more than 50 existing managers had attended a conference last November, called Inspire, to equip them with the confidence and skills to take over the running of a business. He said the sessions would
be repeated for smaller groups regionally this year, as they had proved so successful.
21 May 2015 —
travelweekly.co.uk • 15
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