Dnata Travel will begin communicating the next steps of the Gold Medal and Travel 2 merger to agents this week – and said the teams it has retained will be “integral” to its future.
Managing director of B2B businesses Lisa McAuley explained the consultation to bring the two brands together with the closure of the Travel 2 office in Glasgow was now completed, and said: “The first thing for us is to communicate where we are in terms of the merger and what the next phase of the proposal is.
“That will start in earnest this week and the way that I’m looking at this, is we’re bucketing agents into three different segments, if you like.
“We’ve got the guys who were T2 loyal advocates and sold T2 only, we have those that are GM only, and then we’ve got agents who sold both GM and T2.
“There’s a real loyalty to the brand but actually, it’s a loyalty to the people. So the homeworkers that I’ve got in Glasgow and the GM team are going to be integral moving forward, to ensure that agents move with us as well.”
Homeworking roles created
McAuley revealed that more than 30 permanent homeworking roles had been created in Glasgow “to retain the talent”.
“The agents will know them by name. And its people who have been with T2 for ages; the agents love talking to them. It’s all the usual suspects – and I can’t call one out because then I’d have to call out all of them,” she said.
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“We also have some homeworkers in Gold Medal, but much smaller numbers. So the plan is that the HQ is Leyland, that’s where the operation will be run from, but we’ll have the homeworkers and a few product people homeworking from Glasgow to retain the talent.”
Streamlining
McAuley said that other streamlining had taken place “behind the scenes” which would make the operator more fleet of foot.
“The product and commercial guys have come together with the sales function and with the reservation centre into trading division – and now they’re working much more closely together” she said. “That’s one of the areas that were operating in silos previously, and we’ve brought them together and that will absolutely help us improve the speed to market.”
McAuley also revealed that new brochures will not be released until April next year.
Brochures
She said: “I had a long debate about this. Gold Medal normally launches a raft of brochures in December with a big campaign attached. And T2 would drip-feed its brochures into the market. So back in April, which is when you would start really to look at your brochure planning for December; we were going ‘okay, does it feel right now to launch brochures in December?’ Yep.
“But [fast-forward several months] and then you go, ‘No, it’s not the right thing to do.’
“We’ve looked at every piece of feedback from agents saying ‘my store’s not opening, so send me digital-only’, or ‘my store’s open, but I don’t think customers want to pick up brochures because they’re worried about contamination’, and all of this kind of thing. So we said ‘okay, no brochures in December’.”
McAuley added: “The plan currently is that in April, we’ll go with three brochures. We will have the Worldwide brochure, which will incorporate Incredible Journeys. And we’ll have the Cruise Plus brochure, and we’ll have a Luxury one.
“And then what we plan on doing is having “mini-logues” throughout the year, depending on where’s selling well, what offers we can pull together and what the demand looks like. So trying to match the brochure to the market if you like.”
She said the main brochures and the “mini-logues” would be printed but pointed out that things could change.
“We did some research probably a year ago, and actually agents want brochures and it’s not just the agents who want brochures, they’re telling us that customers want brochures,” she said.
“Whether they’re actually using those brochures to choose a holiday is a different matter or whether it’s a takeaway given by the agent to say ‘this is what you bought’ – and I think it’s more likely to be that. But brochures are a high cost to an organisation and at a point when you’re looking at keeping your costs low, it is something that you need to consider.”
McAuley said the new approach would reduce costs significantly.
“With both GM and T2, we used to produce annually, a brochure portfolio of 26 brochures. So now with one brand, you go down to three brochures. So just you can just see there the amount of cost that you’re saving,” she said.
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Travel 2 and Gold Medal set to merge as dnata launches consultation
