Advantage Travel Partnership plans to partner with Covid testing companies to help members recommend clinics to customers pre-travel.
The travel agency consortium said it aimed to negotiate commercial deals where possible to provide agents with a potential earning opportunity, for example for referring a client to a local test clinic.
Leisure director Kelly Cookes said talks were at an early stage but added it was critical clients got the right test information needed for the range of different requirements to travel to their destination.
She said: “We are still waiting to see what the government will approve; if the answer is testing then we are looking at how we can support our members to help their customers.
“There are lots of testing companies out there and it’s a case of what the government time frame is and what they will recognise and what regulations there are for each country that clients are going to.
“One of the things that concerns me personally is agents recommending tests because they are so many regulations and requirements [for different destinations] such as do you need a hard copy of the test result or can you have it on your phone?
“The last thing agents need is to have clients getting angry if the tests don’t provide them with what they need to travel.”
She said the consortium hoped to work with a broad range of companies geographically in order to meet the needs of its members nationwide.
She said: “We are looking at partnerships with a broad range of testing companies to make sure we have got coverage across the whole of the UK. A lot of the testing clinics are around Manchester, Birmingham and London.”
The exact details of commercial negotiations have yet to be worked out, she said, but would aim to benefit the agent financially.
She said: “We will negotiate a commercial deal where we can. The aim is that there will earning opportunities for agents; it will depend on the commercials and what companies offer. It could be that it’s a straightforward referral scheme.
“We’re doing the groundwork now and working out what is available. From a group point of view it’s something we can do to really help agents to make it easier for them because currently everyone is recommending different companies.”