Miles Morgan, of Miles Morgan Travel
The Aphrodite Hills Resort and Tui Travel fiasco has raised some interesting points over the last week or so.
First, how can two exceptionally well-run businesses get in this kind of mess, causing both to look unprofessional and disorganised?
While this is bad for both parties, my thoughts go mostly to frontline people affected, such as sales director Darren Eade, who has done an excellent job raising the profile of this lovely hotel.
Those in their ivory towers could create a better business environment if they gave more thought to people and less to corporate profits and mind games over contracts.
The travel agent reaction has also been very interesting, with talk of boycotts and selling away from what is a well-known and much‑loved hotel – but why?
Like most agents, I fear quoting any company where the client can go home and look online to find the same holiday with the same supplier cheaper.
If you were a client, wouldn’t you check? It is not hard to do and takes no time once your trusted agent has done the hard part, selecting the right hotel for you.
Thomson, along with a number of other high-profile operators, clearly falls into this category.
What I struggle to understand is the logic behind the pricing policy
and discounting exclusive product online.
When a hotel is featured by multiple suppliers, it makes for a very competitive market where online price is regularly king.
However, what about hotels and products where this is not possible? Thomson has been the pioneer in this area and very successful, with its Gold, Sensatori and other brands, so why give away more?
Why give it away direct-only and cause your shops to lose money (and morale) and agents to not bother offering these great products to potential customers?
This is the area that the Aphrodite Hills might move into.
The latest market figures show Thomas Cook starting to regain some market share. Could this partly be down to its multi-channel, single-price approach?
Certainly as an agent, you have much more confidence in quoting these holidays. The client is likely to check online and they will be reassured to see the same price.
Tui has also been saying that it will move to single pricing, but will this be with a commission element built in or at a nett cost, which has also been talked about?
The latter will be a disaster for my Thomson sales and the former a huge boost (dependent on the commission level).
Service fees are much talked about for agents, but the problem with all this is history. Customers are not used to paying service fees and educating customers would be a tough task. No doubt someone will prove me wrong.
On a final note, good luck, Darren.