The Interview
Julia Lo Bue-Said, Advantage Travel Partnership
As the consortium’s chief executive celebrates 25 years with the business, she looks forward to helping members recover from the pandemic. She spoke to Lucy Huxley
J
ulia Lo Bue-Said became one of the most high-profile advocates for travel agents during 2020,
as Covid-19 ravaged the sector. In frequent television interviews, the chief executive of The Advantage Travel Partnership explained to viewers how devastating the pandemic was for agencies. She also lobbied politicians in Whitehall. Meanwhile, she was supporting
the 700 members of Advantage to survive the turmoil – financially and emotionally – striving to help them to reach 2021 and a hoped-for upturn in travel. It’s all been a far cry from her first
job, working for WHSmith Travel in a shopping centre. That agency was acquired by AT Mays, which itself was subsequently taken over by Thomas Cook, which led her into tour operating for the first time. Lo Bue-Said worked for Best
Travel Group, the largest tour operator to Greece and Cyprus, with its Grecian & Cypriana Holidays brand. There she met industry veterans Hugh Morgan and Tom Knopek, and later joined the latter at Balkan Holidays.
10 7 JANUARY 2021 At Balkan, she met the late Ron
Muir, managing director of the National Association of Independent Travel Agents (Naita), which evolved into Advantage. He recruited her as commercial director to develop agreements with leisure operators and support members. “I remember it like it was
yesterday,” she recalls. “My lifeblood, my whole career, in Advantage until the last five or six years was always in that commercial area. That’s where my passion for the business came.”
A decade of expansion Over the past decade, Lo Bue-Said has developed the consortium’s business travel arm, expanding its global footprint to 75 countries. Advantage has also grown
from about 200 to more than 700 members, with a pre-pandemic turnover of about £4.5 billion. “The last 10 years of business
travel has been a phenomenal time,” she says. “We’ve grown it into the UK’s largest consortium of independent business travel management companies.” But Lo Bue-Said admits that
stepping up to managing director, in 2013, and then to chief executive, in
travelweekly.co.uk
2018, presented challenges. “I’m not sure I was really prepared at first. It’s been a huge learning curve,” she says. “The great thing is the team at
Advantage. A lot of the team have had a long tenure with the organisation.” Despite celebrating a quarter
of a century at Advantage, she is a passionate proponent of change. “I’m the first one to want to
change; otherwise, you lose your sparkle, your innovation and that entrepreneurial spirit,” she says. “I feel our organisation, certainly
over the last five or six years, has stepped into a world that is very different and challenging for our members. We’ve stepped up in terms of making sure that we can
provide our members with all the tools and products they need to be as competitive as they can in a really tough marketplace.”
Partners together One key change was the name, from Advantage Travel Centres to The Advantage Travel Partnership. “It’s about partners together:
whether you’re a member or a business partner,” she says. Lo Bue-Said also appointed the
first non-executive director, former Waitrose boss Steven Esom, in 2013, who brought a wealth of retail and business experience. Even the short-lived alliance
with Worldchoice and Global Travel
Looking back: Lo Bue-Said in the early 1990s
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