Nick Hughes
Sales director, tour operations – B2B Europe, dnata Travel
As we count down to the Agent Achievement Awards, we speak to dnata Travel’s Nick Hughes about the importance of the trade to Gold Medal and Travel 2 and his advice to first-time AAAs attendees
Q. The AAAs are the biggest agent awards in the UK. What have you been doing to improve your relationship with the trade? A. This year we’ve been focusing on continuing to improve our service and all round support for our agents. We’ve introduced a customer satisfaction survey after every call and we are currently scoring 4.8 out of five, which we are really pleased with. It’s important we continually ask for feedback to see what we are doing well and any areas we can improve. Supporting our agents to help grow their confidence, knowledge and understanding in our products is of paramount importance, so this year we have grown our partnership with Clia and embarked on a new partnership with Atas to help spread the word about our cruise and touring products.
Q Why are agents so important to your business? A. Our brands are 100% trade-only, so there is no one more important to our business than our agent partners – our drive is to further enhance our product and service offering to complement their expertise and knowledge. We truly recognise the value that agents bring to the travel industry and aim to support them at every opportunity.
Q. The 2019 awards have some new categories – which is the most exciting for your company? A. The Apprentice Leisure Agent of the Year Award particularly caught our attention. At Gold Medal and Travel 2 we believe in the importance of nurturing young talent. Apprenticeships are a great alternative to university, and apprentices have so much to offer with new ideas and new ways of thinking. We have apprenticeship roles across our sales and marketing departments and we have recently embarked on a new scheme to offer our team leaders a formal apprenticeship qualification. Seeing recognition for apprentices on a platform such as the Agent Achievement Awards is a really positive step towards raising the profile and importance of these schemes.
Q. What’s been the big news at your company in the last year? A. We’ve had such a busy year so it’s hard to pick one thing. We have increased our on-the-road sales team by four, we’ve introduced new long-haul product, we’re working hard on two amazing new websites and we are closer to opening the doors at Lancaster House – Gold Medal’s new headquarters!
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