Suppliers must back ‘faithfuls’ and not ‘traitors’

Were you among the millions of people who watched the celebrity version of The Traitors as it reached its dramatic conclusion?

Somehow, the hit BBC show had passed me by until this series, which meant it was all new to me. I’ll definitely be tuning into the next series, and the ones that follow, because I loved watching the drama unfold and the interactions between the Traitors and the Faithfuls as they tried to figure each other out.  

It certainly wasn’t an easy job for the celebrities to work out just who was who – those Traitors played a blinder – and it made me wonder if we are any better at spotting ‘traitors’ in our industry.

It seems to me that we experience similar challenges in our sector to those that were being played out in plain sight behind the castle walls. 

A strange statement, I hear you say? Think of it this way: we as an industry exist and thrive by developing strong relationships – with our customers, tour operators, destination management companies and, ultimately, the end provider. How well we perform as a business is down to whether we do an excellent job of nurturing those relationships and delivering on our promises. 

When it comes to customers, we are available 24/7. We are professional travel experts and we want to be there for our customers at every step of their journey, from booking to departure and throughout their holiday. 

Last year, we at Designer Travel launched with the Reviews.io platform because we wanted to find out what our customers thought about the service they had received. We are delighted to share that we now have more than 4,000 five-star reviews from our clients. We are faithfuls to the last.

Working together

For suppliers, we have our partnership pledge, and I’m sure many of you have similar schemes. This document, which we have sent to all our key suppliers, sets out what they can expect from us and vice versa when we work together. Our aim is always to be faithful – to under-promise and over-deliver and not be takers.

After fam trips, events and prize giveaways, our members take pride in paying back our partners with bookings and marketing content. It makes me so proud when I get to see the results of a supplier putting their trust in us. 

We also introduced our Savvy Traveller policy, which we compiled to help all our customers, giving them hints, tips and guidance about how to stay safe and secure when it comes to deciding who to book their holiday with. 

Unfair behaviour

It’s important that as an industry we learn how to spot a ‘traitor’ in our midst. We all have to be more vigilant when it comes to various aspects of our daily lives, from recruitment to requests for travel agent rates, allocating educational trips to examining the subsequent level of bookings. 

People who join our industry and call themselves travel agents simply to get commission off their own holidays or to request travel agent rates for themselves are real-life traitors. 

Accepting these rates when you have no intention of booking any other holidays devalues the whole travel agent community. Hotels and suppliers should 100% be asking for verification of business delivered for all requests, because it really is unfair to expect travel agent privileges when you are not and have no intention of ever being a travel agent. 

We are all under pressure when it comes to time, but it is only through investing time and effort that we will be able to identify where we are potentially putting ourselves and our businesses at risk.

With a bit of extra vigilance, we can avoid being ‘murdered’ overnight in the castle or banished at the round table and go on to succeed, just like the best role-playing guests at Ardross Castle.