The Interview
Dame Irene Hays, Hays Travel
As summer 2021 draws to a close, the owner of the UK’s largest independent agency talks to Lucy Huxley about Covid challenges, booking trends and staff vacancies
Dame Irene on . . . the October international travel system review: “There is a big group of people who are not confident about the processes, procedures and perceived barriers to travel currently. That is a significant number, so our ambition should be to have a significant simplification of the testing system based on science: on vaccination numbers and infection rates. These are all still progressing well. It’s not always a nice clean curve – there might be a blip – but overall vaccination rates are going up and infection rates are coming down, so I’m hopeful that, in another four weeks, we will be in a position where we can have simplification of the system.”
Dame Irene on . . . testing: “We have a relationship with two of the recommended suppliers. For pre-departure, within 72 hours of departure, we’ll give [customers] advice about what they need to do and, to safeguard any issues with postage, we have drop-boxes in our shop. They get results generally
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within 24 hours of laboratories receiving it. We’re doing big numbers of [tests]. They cost £33.60 and people are prepared to pay that. The next step is the [test] before they return home. We’ve entered into a relationship with a company who will give us the packs for people to take away with them to do within two days of when they come home. While it sounds challenging, it’s really not. Nevertheless, psychologically, we still have a big number of people who don’t want to put themselves through that. It’s a significant barrier.”
Dame Irene on . . . Hays Travel Tour Operating: “Our tour operation is very strong. We sell a lot of other people’s long- haul as well but we took on a lot of [ex-Travel 2] people in Glasgow and they have been phenomenal. There’s been a trend over the years for people to become more adventurous anyway, so the specialist market is very strong for us. And twin-centre is stronger than it’s ever been, with people perhaps doing something educational or cultural then flopping on a beach.”
Dame Irene on . . . consumer sentiment towards agents: “We’re seeing customers coming to Hays Travel who haven’t booked with us before and haven’t booked with a high street travel agent for a long time. From 2017 to 2019, 19% of our customers were new to Hays Travel. Now, in August, that figure is 56% – a proportion which doesn’t include customers new to us as a result of the addition of the Thomas Cook database. They’re coming in, either perhaps because they couldn’t get through on the phone or couldn’t get a response to a query. They might have had an issue with a refund, or they would just now like to book with a person rather than online. How long that lasts, I don’t know, because we know how successful online is.”
Dame Irene pictured before acting as godmother to P&O Cruises’ Iona in May PICTURE: Christopher Ison
Dame Irene on . . . Hays Travel’s shop network: “We haven’t closed any shops since we last spoke to you [in March]. We have had one or two, where they’re developing a shopping precinct and we can’t stay in that shop. We’re down to just 19 where there’s an outstanding issue but they’re in places we want to be. We’ve made really good progress but it seems like a long time since October 2019 when we embarked on this journey.”
Dame Irene on . . . staffing: “Our staff have been absolutely outstanding in their flexibility around flexi-furlough: working from home, coming in, doing Zoom calls. We are not using furlough at all in retail shops anymore, because we’re selling
We’re still short of travel agents in the shops. We have about 400 vacancies
across the country, which is really significant
travelweekly.co.uk
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