TERRY Fisher is used to doing things at a young age. At 18 he started Travelworld, at 29 he was chairman of Huddersfield Town Football Club and at 35 he sold Travelworld for a small fortune. Now, at the tender age of 36, he’s taken over as managing director of Going Places, as exclusively revealed by Travel Weekly, October 4.
The job is his reward for making Travelworld a powerful force in selling Airtours’ holidays and he’s planning to make a big difference at Going Places.
“The easiest thing is to do nothing,” said Fisher. “But there will be big changes because we need a different structure and a different culture.
“Travelworld has very much got a can do, will do, must do culture. It’s leaner, it’s meaner and Going Places is more of a beast to turn around. But I want to forget about size and get across the same cultures as in a smaller business.”
Fisher wants Going Places to react more quickly to market conditions and to increase sales for Airtours.
“Going Places needs to understand what it is there to do – it is there as a distribution outlet for UKLG operators and their chosen partners. It needs to be more sales driven. I don’t think in real terms its passenger numbers have increased for three to five years and we’ve got to improve that.
“I also think it’s tried too hard to be separate, when you need to work with your partners. The racking policy needs to be looked at and I’ll give you another example – if Going Places is going to open shops, it should sit down with Airtours Holidays MD Chris Mottershead to ask him where he wants shops. There’s no point in distribution if people don’t want it.”
Currently around 60% of Going Places’ air-inclusive tour sales are for Airtours – although this rose to 70% on one day last week – but Fisher thinks he can quickly raise the average to over 65%.
Fisher knows that to get the backing of staff, he has to address their concerns.
“I am a travel agent. I’ve worked in the shop, I understand the frustrations and the concerns that people have.”
The biggest bone of contention is the company’s controversial Pay and Rewards scheme, which has led to a 30% staff turnover in a year. Under the scheme, set up by predecessor Tony Bennett, staff can earn good money, but their basic is only £5,000, making it difficult to secure mortgages. Fisher aims to revamp the scheme and increase basic salaries by Christmas.
“Pay and Rewards is a huge issue and we’re going to look at repackaging the whole thing. It’s not based on directional selling and it needs to be. We need to pay people a fair wage for a fair day’s work and incentivise them. I think to mess around with people’s basic salary is wrong. They need to know that they’ve got a certain standard of living and they’re not forever living in fear that the level is going to drop.
“It’s an urgent priority because we need people to be remotivated in time for the January sales periods.”
Fisher said it is not just pay that concerns staff.
“The staff need to feel they are cared about. If they are told they are going to get a shop fit, they should get a shop fit.”Fisher also wants head office to give more support to counter staff and treat them like customers.
As Travel Weekly exclusively revealed, head office redundancies are on the cards.
“There’s no question it’s over-populated with 450-460 people. But there won’t be knee-jerk reactions. We’ll look at all the departments and where we have to make cuts. We’ve got five buildings and we’ll be down to two by Christmas and in two years we’ll all be in one building in Woking,” said Fisher.