When Gemma Antrobus was little, she wanted to be Wonder Woman.
Her dream of becoming the fictional superhero of the 1970s TV series was soon replaced by a more realistic aspiration, to run a hotel, an ambition she achieved before switching to jobs in marketing and events.
Arguably, as the first female head of Aito Specialist Travel Agents, she has now realised her original dream albeit in a more down-to-earth form.
Antrobus will juggle her new responsibilities as chairman of Aito Agents, the agents’ arm of the Association of Independent Tour Operators, with her full-time role as managing director of Haslemere Travel in Surrey and motherhood.
Fortunately, she is well-versed in the art of juggling roles she joined as MD in 2008, eight months after the birth of her daughter Aurelia, and became an Aito Agents panel member five years ago.
This week is her first as chairman, succeeding Oliver Broad, and she has wasted no time in setting out some goals for the association, which has 123 agency branches on its books.
The first is to drive closer partnerships with tour operator members of Aito, encouraging more members to book them and more operators to join Aito Agents’ All Stars scheme, which tracks and rewards members’ sales with these operators. Currently, around 30 of Aito’s 100 operators are in the scheme.
“I’d like to see more operators involved,” she says. “It’s about educating suppliers and getting agents to talk to them about it. It’s also about how we can strengthen these relationships.”
This might mean increasing sales and product training to help members sell more of their fellow operators.
The signs this year are already good: between January and May, sales of All Stars’ operators were up 25% through Aito Agents on last year.
Another priority is to broaden members’ understanding of the Aito brand, particularly frontline staff, and in turn, educate consumers.
Antrobus’s ultimate aim is for agents to use their affiliation with Aito as a sales tool.
She says: “It’s important frontline staff recognise Aito Agent values and push the brand by telling customers why they sell Aito operators and why they are Aito Agents members.
“We want the Aito brand to be more proactively used as a selling tool. We know our business owners are aware of the brand but do frontline staff understand what Aito is and why it’s so important?”
To drive this home, Antrobus plans to launch an accreditation scheme.
“We would reward supportive members who go to our events,” she says. “We want members to get the maximum out of their membership and shout about it more.”
But Antrobus is also keen to know what agents want. Feedback collated in the next membership satisfaction survey, conducted every two years, will be used to plan future projects.
And although Antrobus doesn’t shout about it, she quietly hopes her appointment will give encouragement to other women in the industry.
“A lot of frontline staff are women and mums like me. Our industry has been built on job sharing and there are fewer women in these types of positions so I do think it¹s hugely significant being the first woman chair.”
But she adds: “I’d love to think me doing this will bring more women into Aito. But it’s not my crusade; I speak on behalf of 123 branches and I’m just the mouthpiece.”