I WENT to the first meeting of the Truly Independent Professional Travel Organisation feeling genuinely eager to find out what it had to offer independent agents. Unfortunately, I came away feeling it had been a complete waste of time.
Gary David of Cadogan Holidays and the other speakers kept emphasising that TIPTO would be purely a marketing group.
Well, I don’t think you can separate marketing from sales in this business.
Midconsort already has commercial sales agreements with many independent operators. It is impossible that all the 20 members of TIPTO will be in our existing portfolio of operators – and other consortia like ARTAC WorldChoice and Advantage Travel Centres are bound to find themselves in the same position.
TIPTO is planning to send representatives out to independents to give a 2hr presentation on its members’ products every month, but what is the point of that if we have no commercial agreements in place with them? Instead of helping independent agents, it’s actually working against them.
Of course, if Midconsort really wanted to work with TIPTO, we could tear up some of our existing agreements and sign-up exclusively with its members.
On the other hand, why should we do so, when we might have perfectly fine, long-standing agreements with TIPTO members’ competitors?
Certainly Gary David has offered us no direct financial inducement to do so. If he was really serious, then his group would be offering us a preferential commission rate common to all TIPTO’s members. Instead, TIPTO is promising not to interfere with the existing commission rates of members.
The one inducement TIPTO is offering is marketing opportunities. A survey of 1,000 independent agents has shown that they want more representatives to visit them, more training seminars, and more roadshows.
Independent agents will always say this kind of thing, but the truth is they never actually have the time for them.
No independent agent can afford to sit down for 2hrs to hear a presentation on five operators, especially ones they have no commercial agreement with. Even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to concentrate for that long.
When I went on a presentation skills course, the first thing I was learned was that after the first 25mins, most people switch off and start having sexual fantasies!
We may sell dreams, but independent agents can’t run their businesses on dreams. Facing actual reality is the way forward.
Sue Foxall is executive director of James Travel and the chief executive of Midconsort