Advantage chief executive John McEwan has revealed a ‘single-minded’ vision of survival for the consortium’s future outside of the Triton Travel Group.
These include plans for a new trust fund facility to allow agents without ABTA bonding to join the consortium for the first time, an ATOL for selected members, outsourcing of back-office functions, and campaigns to raise brand awareness and consumer confidence in travel agents.
McEwan said Advantage was well-placed following its recent departure from independent agency super-consortium Triton, which now consists of just Worldchoice and Global Travel Group agents.
He said: “It’s behind us now and we are 100% confident we made the right decision [to leave] for the business and our members. We have overwhelming support from members.”
Speaking on the closing afternoon of the Advantage conference, attended by 500 delegates, half of which were agents, he said: “As far as I am concerned we are in a class of our own.”
McEwan laid bare plans to work with like-minded organisations and forge new business partnerships, adding the performance of the consortium was more important than size in sheer numbers.
The group’s current annual turnover is £2.5 billion, of which £1.5 billion is from leisure and £1 billion comes from business travel sales.
He also unveiled plans to allow existing and new members to outsource back-office functions and supplier payments to technology company Micros by the end of the year. New members will also be able to use a new trust fund facility if they do not want to become ABTA bonded.
There are also plans to aggregate more villa, hotel and flight product on existing separate websites for members to access component product.