NEWS THE INTERVIEW


the cost of servicing debt has gone up. It becomes overwhelming. “One of the reasons we’ve come out of the pandemic strongly at JMG is that we kept the business going. We lost money and there was a personal cost to that, but the business was ready to hit the ground running because it never stopped operating. In 2024, our business will be double the size it was in 2019, not including OTT, and that is down to being brave in that period.”


OTT is ‘good fit’ He adds: “Of course, OTT creates so many opportunities. From a UK perspective there is so much more we can do with it as part of our stable of brands. OTT links with all our products – Travel Weekly, Aspire, Atas [the Association of Touring & Adventure Suppliers] and The Caterer. UK travel agents might not even realise we own The Caterer, which is the oldest business-to-business publication in the world and covers hotels and restaurants. The training platform will work across all these. “Then if you look at the global


reach of JMG, it will sit across our Connecting Travel business, our


travelweekly.co.uk


Connections luxury businesses, our Global Travel Marketplace business – across our whole portfolio. For the first time, we have something that will work vertically and horizontally across everything in our business, so I’m excited.” Feuell stresses: “It’s business as


usual for OTT. I want to thank our clients, many of whom messaged me, wanting everything to turn out well, which it really has. We’ve emerged far stronger. We’ll continue to create skills-training courses, which we’ll be launching very soon because


62 million people left the industry globally, so being able to train and keep the industry professional as new people join and others come back is important. And we have great sponsors who have agreed to help with those skills courses.” Jacobs agrees: “The opportunities


are extensive. I’m excited because I’m passionate about training. The sustainability of the travel agent community is down to training and to engagement. It is so important agents are not just order-takers. We have to ensure agents can add value.”


AI ‘CAN BE ASSET NOT THREAT’


Generative AI should prove an asset to travel agents and not a threat, according to Clive Jacobs, who notes: “People are becoming obsessed with AI and the threat of AI. There is a bandwagon, but I see AI as advantageous to us as a business. It’s not a threat to us or to the industry so long as we embrace what it can do for us. You can’t replace well-trained people.” OTT founder Julie Feuell agrees, saying: “We can use AI to enable


a lot more content. We’re already using it and producing video-based learning where it reads information and creates film against it to create a video-learning opportunity.” But she warns: “Everything needs to be checked. You need somebody


to say ‘That is correct’ or ‘Let’s change it’. I see AI as a sous chef and we’re the chef. Any kind of training or knowledge content has to be reliable.”


OTT was set up in 2008, growing out of founder Julia Feuell’s recruitment company New Frontiers as a platform to provide product training to the travel industry. Feuell explains: “It grew


where people had not created product training and needed help. We created a platform where you could easily upload and put information together. Then people started asking for it in different languages. “We had investment and


created a global platform which launched in 2018, so 2019 was the first year we sold Online Travel Training globally. Now we have more than 200 courses in 22 languages. We educate the trade on the products and services of suppliers – airlines and cruise companies, destination products, hotels and resorts. “We have 260,000


agents signed up globally and active on OTT and half a million have registered. It grew very quickly.”


16 NOVEMBER 2023 13


PICTURE: Sarah Lucy Brown


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