Three add-ons providers have teamed up to run an “unprecedented” joint training and agent incentive campaign with Midcounties Co‑operative Travel in January.
Holiday Extras, Flexible Autos and Attraction World’s ‘Stronger Together’ initiative aims to give Midcounties agents a “full toolkit” in their ancillaries training, rather than learning about car hire, add‑ons and tickets separately.
The training content will appear on Midcounties’ internal Facebook pages. Each supplier has created video blogs, with “bite-sized” sales tips and product information about their specialist areas.
Joint agent incentives will follow in January, with details yet to be announced.
Rad Sofronijevic, chief operating officer for the travel group at Midcounties Co-operative, said: “We deal with suppliers individually, with different targets and incentives, but now we’ve pulled the support they all give us into one unprecedented campaign.
“There is no direct conflict of interest – they all cover different elements of enhancing the customer journey; for example, you might hire a car to drive to an attraction.”
She said “the time is right” for ancillaries providers to work together as many industry commentators believe selling more extras will help mitigate the extra costs to be incurred by the ban on credit card surcharging starting on January 13.
Lindsay Garvey-Jones, national partnerships manager for Holiday Extras, said: “By working Stronger Together we ensure the teams selling ancillary products have a full toolkit.”
Chantal Tomlinson, sales manager at Flexible Autos, added: “Working together we have been able to introduce key messages, hints and ideas.”
Tracey Bartlam, national account manager at Attraction World, said: “We three companies will enable Midcounties agents to deliver excellent customer service and create additional booking revenue more easily.”