In travel, maybe more than any other retail sector, trust is vital if you are to persuade the consumer to part with thousands of pounds of their hard-earned cash.
The challenge for every travel firm is how to nurture that emotional attachment, particularly with the impersonal web so dominating much of today’s engagement with customers.
Not every brand is a household name and, although your website should shout your expertise to the rooftops, there’s no guarantee this will cut through in a crowded marketplace.
So it’s vitally important that when those customers get in contact, whether on the phone or face to face, they are given the best possible experience.
Maybe that explains that while bookings are migrating to the web, the call centre worker is being valued more highly than others in travel, as figures from New Frontiers suggest.
As we also examine this week, even online accommodation goliath Booking.com has recognised the importance of having someone good on the end of a phone.
This is both a threat and an opportunity for Travel Weekly readers, who will always be much closer to their customers than multinationals like Booking.com.
But you have to let people know you are a company that can be trusted implicitly – whether that’s through expert advice, post-sales service or financial protection. For most of you, that is already a unique selling point.
The danger is that the big boys of the web will seek to steal your thunder just by exceeding what, for most customers, are probably pretty low expectations.