We should celebrate agents and bring the industry together, says Love to Travel owner and SPAA president Joanne Dooey
It’s fair to say 2019 was not a year the travel industry will recall fondly. From the Scottish government making a U-turn on its manifesto pledge to scrap Air Passenger Duty, to the awful news that Thomas Cook had collapsed, it was a year we’d all like to forget.
This year has got off to a really busy start. Customers are looking for the reassurance that booking a holiday through a travel agent brings and are returning to the high street in their droves; consumers appear to have overcome their Brexit travel jitters; and booking levels for many destinations are strong. It is also great to see flights to Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt start again, not least from Edinburgh and Glasgow airports.
On the other hand, coronavirus has affected us all, and amending customers’ bookings, especially in the cruising market, has been a big task for a lot of us. I’m glad to see some airlines have shown empathy and helped us but, as usual, there are some making a quick buck out of a crisis, which needs to be addressed.
Working together
Bringing the industry together in testing times is one of the key roles associations like the SPAA play in the industry. Since the beginning of the year, our organisation has been holding a number of productive meetings with our associate members, including Edinburgh and Glasgow airports and a number of airlines and tour operators.
It’s this level of collaboration that has helped us bring Barrhead Travel and, more recently, Tui, back as members. It’s been great to work more closely with Tui’s tour operator, which has joined, as has its retail network, whose staff are getting involved in our events as well as voting, and being voted for, in our awards.
As I announced in my AGM speech back in December, I’m very keen to recognise people at the coalface of our industry who work tirelessly with clients on a daily basis, so I’m delighted we’ll be doing just that for leisure and business travel staff at our first Sparkle awards in Edinburgh this September.
As the owner of a travel agency, I understand the pressures that agents face every day. So it’s important that we shout from the rooftops when they go above and beyond, whether that’s coming up with new ideas that benefit a company or colleagues, taking part in charity work for the industry, getting great customer feedback or going above and beyond time and time again.
90th annual SPAA dinner
The annual SPAA dinner is my favourite event of the industry calendar as it celebrates the amazing business we are all in, with speeches from some industry standard-bearers and Scottish traditions, such as addressing the haggis. It is a unique event and is the oldest travel industry dinner of its kind.
So as we put a turbulent 2019 behind us, let us look forward to a positive 2020 and celebrate the agents – both in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK – who are the point of contact between our industry and the people we serve.