T r at association’s inaugural virtual week. By Travel Weekly reporters
Brian Young
Suppliers urge agents to use marketing resources
O Niel Alobaidi
perators urged agents to contact them for marketing resources and support to help cater for pent-up demand. “Agents are a vital part of our business,”
said Janet Parton, sales and marketing director at Cosmos and chair of the Atas trade engagement working group. “Every travel business is going through pain. We have all
had to make some very difficult and challenging decisions for the long-term survival of our businesses,” she said. “Two of the greatest costs are overheads and marketing,
which have had to be reduced. That said, we have an absolute belief that the market will come back, so we have kept our six sales team members together. We are ready to talk.” Parton said support could be tailored to each agency’s
needs and include branded marketing collateral, virtual consumer events, webinars and training. Ben Ittensohn, head of global sales at Explore, said the
operator had also retained its full agency sales team. Explore held a virtual launch for its physical 2021 brochure and he encouraged agents to get in contact for marketing assets. John Warr, global sales director at Wendy Wu Tours,
said his team had hosted 85 webinars for agents, plus virtual joint consumer events, since lockdown in March. “I’m a bit surprised we’ve not had more people using the resource,” he said. “It’s hard for agents but we must look
‘Keep marketing and even do it yourself’
Travel firms should consider DIY marketing and PR to help them through the Covid-19 crisis, experts suggested. Agents and operators attending Atas’s Virtual Week were advised it
was vital for their brands to continue to engage with customers to retain their trust and were told how they could sustain marketing activities. Digital Drums chief executive Steve Dunne said companies did not
have to spend large sums on expensive marketing consultancies. “There are diamonds in your own
backyard,” he said. “If you can harness that, you can do some very effective marketing for little or no money at all.” David Forder, head of marketing at The
Steve Dunne
Advantage Travel Partnership, said: “There is a lot that small independent agencies can do themselves if they look at what they have got available to them.”
Janet Parton
John Warr
Sarah Weetman
Ben Ittensohn
to the future. Those who have engaged with us are seeing bookings come in and the guys on the road make the difference. Use us to drive forward new bookings; there is definitely pent-up demand.” Sarah Weetman, head of trade sales at G Touring
brands Travelsphere and Just You, said her team’s webinars had been popular. “We listen to trade partners; we make life easier for
them – that’s our job,” she said. “We all want enquiries and to convert them to bookings. Get in touch with us.”
Operators report the types of holiday attracting strong bookings for 2021
Short-haul destinations, high-value ‘bucket-list’ trips and tours for solo travellers are among the biggest sellers for the touring sector in 2021, according to operators. Ian Dines, chief people and
customer officer at Newmarket Holidays, said: “British Isles tours [are] selling really well for early spring, Europe is selling well for peak summer as expected, and long-haul is starting to come back in terms of bookings.” Tom Morgan, Riviera Travel’s
head of agency sales for the UK and Ireland, reported strong bookings from March 2021 onwards, with
travelweekly.co.uk
most customers having switched departures to next year across both its cruise and touring programmes. Intrepid Travel reported more
than £1 million of new bookings in September – its best month for sales since February – including £200,000 of bookings to Antarctica. Partnership growth manager
Matt Eadie said: “There are a lot of customers out there who have travel funds burning in their pockets.” In a separate session, The Travel
Village chief executive Phil Nuttall said the growth of UK travel would be a long-term trend, “not a stopgap”.
29 OCTOBER 2020 11
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