NEWS CONFERENCE REPORT


Jet2holidays VIP Agents’ Conference: More than 270 top-performing agents attended the four-day event. Lucy Huxley reports from Antalya, Turkey


Jet2holidays trade team: Lauren Atchison, Daisy Friend, Simon Marshall, Kathryn Davies and Nikki McGuire


Heapy urges government to help revive high streets


The boss of Jet2holidays has issued a rallying call to stop the demise of the high street.


Chief executive Steve Heapy said


the travel industry employs a huge number of people who should “come together and take action”. “I am upset by the continued


demise of the high street,” he told delegates. “With a number of high profile businesses downsiing, going into administration or closing, it is a real concern. “Some of these were real


“I want to see the high street reinstated as the hub of every community”


magnets. Where they were, they drew people in to shop, but as more shut down, there’s less and less reason to come in. “I want to see the high street reinstated as the hub of every


Labour government would be ‘huge threat’


If a general election was held and Jeremy Corbyn came to power it would be a massive threat to the economy and anyone running a business, according to the boss of Jet2holidays and Jet2.com. Chief executive Steve Heapy said there was a “civil war” in


the government. “Corbyn is a total Marxist, so that would be a big threat to the economy. There would be a massive outflow of confidence and potentially the collapse of sterling, which will put even more pressure on anyone running a business.” On Brexit, he said: “Hopefully it will be pretty painless, but there’s a long way to go. There’s been no noticeable impact on demand yet, but the longer the uncertainty continues, it will be affected.”


community, which supports local businesses, but there needs to be a co-ordinated strategy from government to support this and revive our high streets into vibrant places again, where people want to come shopping.” Heapy said in his local town, near Oldham, a number of shops have shut and the council has imposed “extortionate” parking charges. “Local councils are contributing


to the demise of the high street when they should be saving it,” he said. “We all need to lobby government to act now to get things back on track.” Heapy said the industry should also lobby government for lower business rates, to tackle the issue of parking fees and to give incentives to small business owners in town centres. He called on Abta to help lead the charge. “At Jet2holidays, we want to


work with you guys on the high street. You provide a fantastic service to your communities – but we need more support centrally.”


12travelweekly.co.uk6 December 2018


Tony Mann (left) and Jodie Mann (second right), Idle Travel, pick up the Super Star award from Martin Kemp and Daisy Friend, Jet2holidays


Boss tells trade he would like to ‘pay more commission’


The boss of Jet2holidays has pledged to look at ways to help the trade earn more money selling his holidays. An agent at the operator’s


fourth annual conference challenged chief executive Steve Heapy over web discounts. The agent asked: “Can


you do anything about web discounts? Can you find a way to help us earn a little bit more commission?” Heapy said: “We would like


to pay you more commission. Our objective isn’t to screw you and pay you as little as possible but it’s a balancing act. We have put our 2019 programme on sale and that costs us £1.6 billion. “So we start £1.6 billion down


and we have to get that back and then make a profit. “We’ll look at ways [to


do that]. We are going into budget meetings this week and Alan [Cross, Jet2holidays head of sales] has some proposals for me to look at. There are various levers we can turn, and [we can] offer mark-ups. So we will look at that.”


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