| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 15/05/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 26 |
| Copyright: Other |
Feeling at home with selling the UK
The participants“People holiday in Britain because they want to and it’s atraining issue to get more sold through agents. If you include short breaks, 27m UK holidays are sold each year-we would contribute to industry-wide training.”
Yvonne Borg, director, Hoseasons Holidays
Name: Yvonne Borg.
Company History: Hoseasons was the subject of a management buyout last September, with the support of venture capitalists, which led to Borg gaining a stake in the company. Hoseasons has around 1m passengers a year and around 50% of its business comes through the trade. The company is synonymous with boating holidays, although only one in seven of its holidays are on boats. Main brands are Hoseasons Boating in Britain, France and Belgium; Hoseasons Holiday Parks and Lodges in Britain; Hoseasons Holiday Hamlets in Ireland; Hoseasons Cottages in the UK and Ireland; and Hoseasons Parks in Europe.
“People are moving from one or two-week breaks to three-night breaks and I think that gives agents anopportunity to sell the domestic market as an add-on to main packages.”
Steve Foster,managing director, Holiday Cottages Group
Name: Steve Foster.
Company History: Holiday Cottages Group was bought by Thomson in August 1994. It now has around 800,000 customers throughout the UK and France. Its main brands are Country Holidays; English Country Cottages; Blakes Holidays in Britain; Blakes Boats; Country Cottages in France; Chez Nous; and Country Cottages in Ireland. Around 60% of Blakes’ bookings go through the trade but overall only 10% ofHoliday Cottages Group products are sold through travel agents.
“People expect to book UKholidays themselves and I really thinkthere’s an awfullot of work foragents to bring that businessback.”
Arabella Nairne, sales and marketing manager,The London Pass
Name: Arabella Nairne.
Company History: launched December last year, The London Pass offers visitors to the capital the chance to pre-pay for a pass that will entitle them to admission to around 50 attractions. A one-day pass, including unlimited travel, is £22. Available through tour operators, The London Pass is aiming for 75,000 sales in its first year.
Debating the issue: from left, Steve Foster, Jeremy Skidmore, Arabella Nairne and Yvonne Borg discuss how agents can make money from selling their domestic packages. With many people happy to book UKholidays themselves, it could be a struggle
Lunch with Travel Weekly looks at domestic holidays. Can agents capitalise on this huge market?Travel Weekly editor Jeremy Skidmore talks to Holiday Cottages Group managing director Steve Foster, Hoseasons Holidays director Yvonne Borg and The London Pass sales and marketing manager Arabella Nairne.
Overseas tour operators experienced a sluggish start to summer and travel agents were offering discounts of up to 40% to try to shift stock. I wondered if there had been a similar sluggish demand in the UK domestic market. Holiday Cottages Group managing directorSteve Foster admitted that the last few years have been tough, partly due to the strength of the pound.“However, there has been a tremendous growth in short breaks,” said Foster.”People are moving from one or two-week breaks to three-night breaks and I think that gives agents an opportunity to sell the domestic market as an add-on to main packages.”
Hoseasons Holidays director Yvonne Borg said the market around Christmas had been sluggish as people had a lot of expense at that time of the year and the consequent discounting campaigns from major overseas operators had confused people.
“From mid-February, the bookings started to go well and I agree with Steve, there has been a huge growth of weekend and mid-week breaks,” she said.
“Booking patterns have changed and you can’t grumble, you just have to accept it.
” You can never go back to getting 60% of bookings before the end of February because those days have gone.
“We have also found that people want the right deal at the right price rather than just the cheapest deal. They stay loyal if you give them a good holiday experience. They are not all looking for a discount.”
The London Pass sales and marketing manager Arabella Nairne said lots of people were booking for her product several months in advance and it was also attracting people with a high disposable income.
“DINKs (Double Income No Kids) and SINKs (Single Income No Kids) are buying The London Pass,” she said.
The Internet
Most of the noises about sales of package holidays over the Internet have been made by e-retailers and major operators but it struck me that domestic holidays were a natural on-line purchase. Much of the product is accommodation-only and very simple to book. Foster confirmed the Thomson Travel Group line that it will not be giving its content to other Web sites to sell and claimed it would launch its own cottages site, www.country-holidays.co.uk, within six weeks. “We’ve concentrated on getting it right,” he said.
Nairne said The London Pass is sold over the Internet and the booking trends vary throughout the world.
“Australians and Americans book the product on-line whereas in Canada, people get the information on-line but do the actual booking by telephone.” The product is available at www.londonpass.com.
Borg has more experience with Internet bookings than our other guests as www.hoseasons.co.uk has been running for four years.
“When we started it was just an information gathering site but at the end of October last year, we started taking bookings on-line,” she said.
“The interest was quite phenomenal across the product range and I was a bit concerned because a lot of the industry feels threatened by it. But since the end of the first week in March, we’ve had a separate site for agents and we’ve had a great response. We can reduce our viewdata costs by going via the Internet.
“But you’re only going to be successful on the Internet if you have a good call centre to look after the people who want brochures.”
Bookings through agents
Foster believes that domestic sales are a vast untapped market for agents.
“Our customers are socio-economic group ABC1 and often they don’t realise agents can help them. We sent a mystery shopper into travel agents to book a domestic holiday and 7% of them sent us to tourist information centres to book a UK holiday.”
Borg felt strongly that there needed to be more industry-wide training.
“People holiday in Britain because they want to and it’s a training issue to get more sold through agents. If you include short breaks, 27m UK holidays are sold each year.
“I think it is something that head offices of travel agents need to address. We larger operators pay a reasonable and fair commission to the trade and the expense is all up front for us. We need to get together and deliver a memory to young people who sell the holidays. We would certainly contribute to industry-wide training.”
Foster and Borg both agreed that agents need to be convinced that the UK is a great place to holiday and that they can make a lot of money out of it.
Foster was critical of the national tourism boards, saying they did not have a unified approach to the product.
“I think they assume that people know about the UK. The Scottish Tourist Board does it well but the rest don’t. There doesn’t seem to be a great relationship between UK operators and tourist boards.”
Our guests also felt there was a misconception about the quality of UK holidays.
ARTAC and Lunn Poly
Hoseasons is a strong supporter of ARTAC Worldchoice and Borg is very satisfied with the number of bookings achieved through the consortium. However, she told a story which indicated the strength of Lunn Poly and also the demand for the Hoseasons brand.
“After Thomson bought Blakes, the commission levels Lunn Poly wanted were out of the realms of what we would pay. It was a shame but I thanked them for their business over the years and they were downgraded as a non-appointed agent. I imagine we were taken off the shelves and were not promoted.
“But although bookings through Lunn Poly went down by 30% last year, they did not go through the floor. That was proof that the product was consumer driven. Lunn Poly was still producing more bookings for us than ARTAC, which is an appointed agent and was earning 4%-6% more commission,” said Borg.
The Future
Our guests felt holidaymakers would want greater choice and would be taking more short breaks in the future.
“We have found that people like variety and that is what has attracted them to The London Pass,” said Nairne. “I don’t think there is one single particular attraction that people want – instead they want choice.”
“Booking patterns have changed and you can’t grumble, you just have to accept it. You can never go back to getting 60% of bookings before the end of February.”
Yvonne Borg, director,Hoseasons Holidays
“Lunn Poly was still producing more bookings for us than ARTAC, which is an appointed agent and was earning 4-6% more commission.”
Yvonne Borg, director,Hoseasons Holidays
Agent persuasion: Yvonne Borg, top, and Steve Foster, above, both believe that travel agents need to be convinced themselves that the UK is a great place to go on holiday and can earn them good money before they will start selling it to their customers
“We sent a mystery shopper into travel agents to book a domestic holiday and 7% of them sent us to tourist information centres to book a UK holiday.”
Steve Foster,managing director, Holiday Cottages Group
“DINKs (Double Income No Kids) and SINKs (Single Income No Kids) are buying The London Pass.”
Arabella Nairne, sales and
marketing manager,The London Pass