AGENTS from the vertically integrated groups should
not be paid for booking holidays, claims Holidays By Phone managing director Steve
Endacott.
In a move sure to alarm high-street counter staff and
reignite the low wage debate, Endacott proposed agents should receive money for
recruiting customers in order to avoid a conflict with clients who make direct
bookings over the telephone.
Speaking at The Great Debate, hosted by the Chartered
Institute of Marketing Travel Industry Group, Endacott labelled high-street
stores as little more than “brochure warehouses” which enabled customers to
walk in, pick up a brochure and take it home without speaking to anyone.
He said: “The industry must move away from paying
agents a basic wage of £9,000 and then take away their opportunity to earn more
money through commissions by putting direct phone numbers on brochures.”
Endacott said agents should collect a client’s name
and contact details before allowing them to take brochures home. If they went
ahead and made a booking at a later stage, the agent should then receive a
bonus for having recruited the customer.
Endacott said for the system to be worthwhile, the recruitment
bonus would have to be more than the amount paid to a call-centre agent for
actually taking the booking.
He added that travel agents would have to add more
value to the service to compete with the information-rich content on the web.
“The Internet has not got the pictures and graphics
available on television, but the data is there and it’s in the home so people
will pick up the phone to book,” he said.
“My belief is that more
people will book on the phone. They have everything they need in terms of
information already available to them so they just have to go ahead and make
the booking.”