Trade distribution Investing for the future
booking journeys for businesses depending on the sort of booking journey a business wants.”
The investments the company is making
also fall into three categories. Barritt says: “First, we’re reinvesting in our core platform iSell to provide best-in-class functionality. “Second, we’re developing a standardised booking path for customers, building standardised journeys. We are trying to simplify what we do so we just hand over the booking journey to a client. Creating bespoke customer journeys is more difficult to support. “Third, we’re developing a new tours
proposition for next year, which we are looking to launch at World Travel Market in November. It’s for tour operators curating their own product and, in time, we’ll add cruise to it.”
Challenging times bring opportunity Barritt identifies a number of challenges facing the business, but with Brexit thankfully not one of them. The first is “around how we deliver customer service”. He says: “We were lacking some tools and resources. We deploy research and support teams and tools and are introducing service desks. “A second area we were under-resourced
in was in front and back-end teams. We were concerned we weren’t paying enough so we’ve increased salaries. We also needed
We’ve pumped in a significant amount of money – on infrastructure improvements for customers and front-end and back-end resources
more people in certain areas so we have 15 new people starting – a workforce increase of 15%.”
THE UK has the smallest number of tour operators and agencies of Europe’s leading outbound
markets, but the highest turnover (Figure 47). The UK sector also appears the most highly concentrated (Figure 48)
The company employs 80 people in East Kilbride and about 115 in total. Barritt insists: “We’re a company that is
growing and we continue to invest. Glasgow and Edinburgh are renowned for their tech innovation and we see travel technology growing in Scotland.”
FIGURE 47: TRAVEL AGENCIES & TOUR OPERATORS No of enterprises, 2017
Turnover (€ billion) €bn
5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000
0 16,800* 14,600 12,800 8,900* 8,100
10 20 30 40 50 60
0 Employing 250+
10 20 30 40 50
0 46 31 23 11 8
FIGURE 48: TOUR OPERATOR/TRAVEL AGENCY ENTERPRISES Employing 50-249 197
Employing 10-49
100 150 200
72 59 50 0 30 | Travel Weekly Europe Report 2019 196
1,000 1,200
89
200 400 600 800
0 598 1,168 768 556 428
5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000
0 11,400 8,200 7,100
Source: Eurostat, 2017
€56.2bn* €35.2bn €22.1bn €13.3bn* €11.3bn* *2016 data Source: Eurostat
France Germany Italy Spain UK
Employing up to 9 16,200 14,000
France Germany Italy Spain UK
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