IHAVE been in travel for about 20 years now and I’ve had experience in pretty much all aspects of the industry.
The gay and lesbian travel market has got to be one of the most specialised markets in the travel industry. It is also a very demanding market and to succeed in this area you really have to pay a lot of attention to customer service.
I learnt a lot about customer service from British Airways, which I joined in 1985 as a flight attendant. I absorbed the company’s philosophy and now I really enjoy using that knowledge in my own company.
One of the best examples of the importance of customer service to our business was in 1997 when Man Around offered a gay and lesbian Mardi Gras package to Sydney.
Part of the service that we offered was a staffed welcome desk at the hotel, The Southern Cross Hotel, which is located right in the heart of Sydney’s gay and lesbian district, Darlinghurst.
Our staff are on call 24hrs a day and are dedicated to looking after all of our clients and making sure that if there is anything they need, they get it.
One night we got a call at the desk from one of our clients asking if we could send someone up to turn down the air conditioning as the baby was cold. A Man Around staff member went up to the room to make the necessary adjustments to the air-conditioning unit and found that two gay men were sharing the room, and that the baby was in fact a doll dressed up as a baby! Suffice to say this was the beginning of a very long week.
For the rest of the trip, everyone had to treat the doll as a baby, including providing a high chair for it to eat its porridge in every morning and “cootchy cootchy cooing” on cue. The two men went everywhere with the baby, which was always dressed from head to toe in frills.
For us, it was just part of our customer service to treat the doll as if it were a baby. If that’s what the clients wants, then that’s what they get. Nonetheless, it was pretty bizarre and fortunately most requests are more straightforward, such as calls from clients from discos at 4am when they’ve lost their wallet or forgotten how to get home.
We’ll always look after them and go and bale them out, whatever their circumstances.
The idea to launch Man Around came from personal experience. I was travelling with a boyfriend in Rome in the late 1980s and we checked into our hotel only to find that we had been given a room with two single beds in it.
We were too embarrassed to go down to the front desk and ask to change rooms so we just put up with it. I thought at the time it would be nice to book a holiday with a company that understood what we wanted and didn’t make us feel self-conscious about asking for it.
So I suppose that’s why Man Around is doing well – we genuinely understand our market, and we’ve had a lot of experience of it. It comes down to is flexibility. Most travel companies make it really hard or impossible for clients to make changes to their travel arrangements once they have paid and been ticketed. A lot of our clients book their holidays a long way in advance, such as trips to the Mardi Gras each year, for which some people will book up to 12 months ahead.
But the nature of the gay lifestyle means that people’s circumstances may change by the time they go on a trip.
Therefore we must act accordingly. We understand it’s important for our customers to have this flexibility and they value it really highly.
It’s a really rewarding business now. We’ve built up a very loyal customer base and our repeat business is very strong. That’s obviously the best indication that people appreciate what we are doing.
As well as building our business to the more traditional gay resorts, we’ve realised the importance of offering new destinations, such as South Africa.
We’re determined to keep evolving and offering our clients a varied and challenging travel experience suited to their lifestyle.
1984:joined Ferrero UK as a junior accountant.
1985:joined British Airways as a flight attendant and worked in customer service. Undertook numerous BA-sponsored courses which included a diploma in customer service from Manchester University, and also language diplomas.
1990:joined Departures as finance director.
1991:launched Man Around with business partner Ricky Judah, specialising in long-haul travel for the gay and lesbian market. In the same year, launched Neroni and French, a US-style shares investment club.
1999:Man Around acquired Sensations Holidays, a leading short-haul gay operator.
- Understand your customer and deliver what you say you’re going to deliver. In the travel industry, customer service is paramount and if you can get that right and you provide a good value product, you will automatically have the edge on the competition.
- Be flexible – people’s circumstances change and they will really value your company if you can work with them.
- Pay attention to detail – it’s the little things that slip through the net that can really slip you up.
- Be straight! It may sound odd coming from a gay operator, but no matter what your orientation, it is important that your clients and staff really believe that you are above board.