CONFERENCE Holidaysplease Conference 2022: Just under 70 agents and 37 suppliers attended


Holidaysplease ‘on track to achieve turnaround target’


H


olidaysplease is on track to return to its pre-pandemic financial position in the coming months, after “taking 12 months to recover what was lost in 21 months”


during the pandemic. Agents attending the company’s first conference since


2019 were told commission payments for the past year were 30% higher than in 2019, with sales ahead of 2019 levels consistently since spring 2021. Directors Richard Dixon and Charles Duncombe


said every calendar month in 2022 had been the best on record for the agency, while July and August were record departure months for the company, accounting for £11 million of business. The strong performance means Holidaysplease is on


track to achieve a target set out by Duncombe in a Travel Weekly webcast before the summer season to recoup losses and return to growth around the turn of the year. Referring to a sales incentive which will see all agents


and HQ staff taken to Mauritius next summer if targets are achieved, Duncombe said: “Everything at the moment suggests we are bang on track.


We stuck the course, knowing Covid


was only going to go on for so long, and were ready for the rapid recovery


Dixon said the swift recovery was an endorsement of


the company’s approach during the pandemic, when it made no redundancies and used cash reserves to ensure it was well-placed to bounce back strongly. He hailed Duncombe for “steering a £30 million


business” through the pandemic, and also said the delegation of responsibility for the day-to-day running of the agency and its franchise arm to senior managers from spring 2021 had helped the company evolve and thrive. Duncombe told agent partners: “We had the option to


play it safe and hunker down or there was the ‘screw this’ option, where if we were going to go down, we were going to go down swinging. “We stuck the course, knowing Covid was only going to


go on for so long, and we were ready for the rapid recovery we have seen since 2021.”


Agency trumpets success of sample-price marketing


Holidaysplease has improved its conversion rates on enquiries driven by consumer marketing featuring sample pricing. The agency said the approach


had lowered the number of overall enquiries generated by communications featuring prices but said customers who did respond were “serious about booking”. Duncombe said the company’s


Holiday Booking Guide had been kept “largely informational” during the pandemic but was now being updated with more product information and guide prices. He said the pricing experiment


was introduced three to four months ago and would now be


10 27 OCTOBER 2022


extended to more destinations, with the prices shown a “halfway house” between lead-in and average. “We had feedback that some


customers didn’t have realistic expectations of what a destination was going to cost,” he said. “[Showing prices] has reduced


the number of enquiries but the enquiries we have been getting have a greater conversion rate.


“It is attracting customers who


are serious about booking.” Duncombe said Holidaysplease


continued to invest in its marketing and technology, including additional server space which should improve email speeds and reduce website down-time. The agency is also expanding


its social media focus, producing support and assets for agents marketing on Facebook and increasingly on other channels including Instagram. Delegates at the conference


Fancy joining the sector? Find out more, pages 27-59


were shown examples of how filtering Facebook posts to target specific groups of customers could dramatically improve response rates.


travelweekly.co.uk


Directors Charles Duncombe (left), Sonia Dixon and Richard Dixon


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68