Q Rascel Coffey& A
director of sales, UK & Ireland, G Adventures
Q. Tell us why you are sponsoring the 2018 Agent Achievement Awards. A. As a business we really believe in celebrating winning and achievements, and the AAAs are a fantastic opportunity for us to celebrate and thank all of our agent partners, from high street to homeworkers, here in the UK. The awards are our way of applauding all the fantastic talent we have in the industry and celebrating everything we have achieved together in an evening of glitz and glamour.
The biggest celebration of travel agents in the UK – the Travel Weekly Agent Achievement Awards – is now just a month away. Here we chat to Rachel Coffey, G Adventures’ UK and Ireland sales director
Q. How important are agents to your business? A. With sales through the trade making up over 70% of our UK bookings, agents play an integral role in our business and are ambassadors for our brand. The nature of the touring and adventure industry, along with our increasingly diverse portfolio, mean we rely heavily on the expertise and knowledge of our agents to connect travellers with the right tour and travel style. Agents also play an essential part in our quest to use travel as a force for good. The more we grow and thrive through the success of our agent partners, the more social enterprise projects we can support, communities we can engage with and lives we can change.
Q. What have you done and plan to do to improve your relationship with agents? A. You can’t paint all agents with the same brush, so we work to understand our partners’
needs and how we can support them more effectively. We empower agents to work independently, with access to a library of assets and materials, while ensuring a fantastic team is in place to support when needed. This year, we have restructured and expanded our UK trade sales team to focus on more face-to-face time with agents. The team now consists of nine specialists, out on the road daily to support agents, a national sales manager and myself as director of sales. We have increased budgets for fam trips and training alongside our incredibly popular incentive programmes. Over the past 12 months, we have grown the ‘Boombox’, our in-house call centre team of experts on call 24/7. In addition, lifetime deposits, guaranteed departures and price parity across the trade continue to add value for agents.
Q. What has been the highlight or biggest achievement over the past year? A. G Adventures has picked up nine industry awards in the UK and Ireland in the last 12 months, covering all sectors of the business, from trade and consumer to brand campaigns, marketing and sustainability. Earlier this year, we took a fam trip to Peru, hosted for the first time by our founder Bruce Poon Tip. The trip was designed to showcase the purpose behind G Adventures and allow partners to see first-hand the lives that are being changed in the communities we visit. We also saw the opening of The Gate, our new European
Rachel Coffey
Headline sponsors
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travelweekly.co.uk 14 June 2018
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