Jet2holidays chief executive Steve Heapy vowed to continue to support the trade and not reduce commissions.
He was quizzed by agents at the operator’s conference in Paphos, Cyprus, alongside other members of the senior leadership team.
Jet2holidays has seen big growth in the last year, with its Atol numbers rising to 2.3 million, but its proportion of trade sales remains at 32%.
Heapy said: “We don’t have targets by channel, and we’ve seen the increase in sales both through travel agents and direct. We are taking many more people on holiday through travel agents and we are not trying to reduce that.”
Some agent delegates feared Jet2 might reduce commissions if its growth continued but Heapy said: “I will give a 100% guarantee that we will continue to support you [the trade] and commissions will remain.
“We will still push direct business but we will never disadvantage the trade channel. We will always push the trade demand and commissions will remain the same.”
He added that the trade team was recruiting new members and cabin crew have been trained to work in the trade team over winter when flights are less busy.
“Travel agents are a very important part of our business. One of our founding principles was that we will always provide travel agents with enough support.”
Heapy added that the differential in price between booking online and through an agent would remain, and said: “We have to have a differential it’s the only way our business model will work.
“We constantly monitor the differential and set it at a level where when an agent makes a booking there’s still enough of a margin for them to take a decent amount of money.”