change in agents pay required claims endacott

AGENTS from the vertically integrated groups should not be paid for booking holidays, claims Holidays By Phone managing director Steve Endacott.

In a move sure to alarm high-street counter staff and reignite the low wage debate, Endacott proposed agents should receive money for recruiting customers in order to avoid a conflict with clients who make direct bookings over the telephone.

Speaking at The Great Debate, hosted by the Chartered Institute of Marketing Travel Industry Group, Endacott labelled high-street stores as little more than “brochure warehouses” which enabled customers to walk in, pick up a brochure and take it home without speaking to anyone.

He said: “The industry must move away from paying agents a basic wage of £9,000 and then take away their opportunity to earn more money through commissions by putting direct phone numbers on brochures.”

Endacott said agents should collect a client’s name and contact details before allowing them to take brochures home. If they went ahead and made a booking at a later stage, the agent should then receive a bonus for having recruited the customer.

Endacott said for the system to be worthwhile, the recruitment bonus would have to be more than the amount paid to a call-centre agent for actually taking the booking.

He added that travel agents would have to add more value to the service to compete with the information-rich content on the web.

“The Internet has not got the pictures and graphics available on television, but the data is there and it’s in the home so people will pick up the phone to book,” he said.

“My belief is that more people will book on the phone. They have everything they need in terms of information already available to them so they just have to go ahead and make the booking.”