Established travel firms are having to recruit expertise into their businesses to keep up to speed with advances in technology and the internet.
Dave Burling, Tui UK managing director, told this week’s Abta Travel Convention that the hiring of Dan Robb from Google as its first digital marketing director was an example of that.
Burling said: “We haven’t necessarily got all the capability [in the digital world] and we are having to hire new people to get expertise into Tui.
“And we have to keep recruiting to get expertise in new areas. There are certain parts of the market where talent is really sought after.”
Burling said he could not emphasise enough the importance of getting the right people to take the opportunities that are available.
“It’s so important to get your company behind the strategy. A lot of companies talk about personalisation as being something more technology orientated.
“But we’ve got workers overseas that can become part of the whole social network linking to customers and that a really strong way of personalising the experience to the customer.
“There are huge opportunities there and we are at such an early stage on that.”
Steve Barrass, Gold Medal managing director, said people were being overlooked in the drive to exploit modern forms of technology that promises to personalise strategies.
“Technology can be an enabler. I’m not sure I’ve heard enough in this conference about the people element of personalisation.
“It’s such a huge differentiator in any personal relationship – the people I employ and how their interact with my customers and my suppliers.
“How do you retain talent, how do you succession manage, how do you ensure your objectives are aligned with your plans? You can’t remove people from personalisation.”
Burling said: “Lots of the algorithms are designed to replicate what happens in a retail store but event the best ones are nowhere near as good as a travel advisor.”