NEWS CONFERENCE REPORT
Travel Counsellors Annual Conference: Record numbers of agents are becoming high earners as more package up holidays. Juliet Dennis reports
Presenter Vernon Kay
Travel Counsellors clocks up 53 ‘sales millionaires’
Travel Counsellors has reported its best year to date as its agents evolve into ‘tour organisers’.
The organisation said sales
for the 12 months to October 31, 2015, were 12% up. It also revealed a 21% increase in the number of travel counsellors
“The main message is we have moved from being travel agents to being tour organisers”
globally achieving more than £1 million in sales for the same period. There are now 53 ‘TC millionaires’. Of the 1,440 travel counsellors
globally, including 900 in the UK, 685 reported their best-ever sales months between November 2014 and October 2015. The figures were released at the
organisation’s star-studded annual conference at the Manchester Central Convention Centre, which had the theme ‘Doing The Right Thing’ and was attended by more than 1,400 delegates. Managing director Steve Byrne
STAR TURN: Comedian John Bishop meets counsellors. Other conference guests included Gary Barlow and Amanda Lamb
attributed the 12% rise in overall sales to the success of the group’s in-house selling system, Phenix, which enables travel counsellors to put together their own packages. “The main message is we have
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travelweekly.co.uk 26 November 2015
moved from being travel agents to being tour organisers. Travel counsellors are sourcing more product direct and creating their own itineraries from core providers rather than third-party providers,” he said. In 2015, more than £115 million of sales were booked through Phenix, representing almost 36% of all the organisation’s sales. Just over a quarter (26%) of travel counsellors booked more than half their sales through the system. Not all sales currently go
through Phenix, as bookings with third-party suppliers fall outside the system. Byrne hopes the share of sales
through Phenix will increase from 36% to 60% in 2016 as more content is added and the system is developed to make it easier to use. But he stressed the group would continue to work with traditional operators. “There is still scope for operators to grow their business [with us]; Phenix will not be able to fufil every need and we always want to offer what is right for the customer,” he said.
Company’s duty office offers advice in a crisis
Travel Counsellors’ new global duty office has “come into its own” following recent security scares. The office, which opened six months ago at the company’s UK headquarters in Manchester, is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week and offers travel counsellors an up-to- date travel advice service worldwide and helps them in crisis situations. Managing director Steve
Byrne admitted: “It has really come into its own with recent events.” Operations manager Sandie Fisher told delegates at the conference: “The feedback so far has been really positive.” Travel counsellor Lisa
Hillyard told how the service had helped her. “One morning I saw a duty office email about high winds at Heathrow. One of my customers was due to fly out to Mexico, so I contacted him and he left earlier and caught his flight without delay. The duty office makes a huge difference to me and my customers.”
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