APT and Travelmarvel are recruiting for two new business development managers (BDMs), which will bring the brands’ sales team to its largest-ever size.
The sales team for the touring and cruise sister brands currently has three full-time BDMs on the road – Becky Baumbach, Carrie Grant and Denise Rice – along with Brad Bennetts, head of sales and business development, and support from the ‘Inside Sales’ team.
Bennetts said: “The team have done a superb job of driving our business development efforts during the pandemic and now, following a fantastic return season, we are now in a position to recruit for two pivotal roles to help the team to further develop our growing trade partnerships.
“With the new appointments in place, plus our additional Inside Sales team, we will have a team of seven supporting our trade partners.”
Baumbach will oversee sales and trade relationships in the south, while the new BDM recruits will manage those in the Midlands and the north.
“The appointments will bring the team’s size above pre-pandemic levels, and we have aggressive plans to grow our sales team and agent support resources far beyond this,” he added.
“With the new team in place, we will move into our second recruitment phase, as we look to build the APT & Travelmarvel sales team to its largest ever size.
“The additional headcount will allow us to protect our position as the industry’s leading river cruise and touring operator and keep improving the support and service that we deliver to our agent partners.”
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He said sales have been “flying” and retail agents are “booming”, adding: “We are re-emerging and have seen phenomenal 2022 sales, plus released exciting 2023 programmes.
“Our travel agent partner sales have really ramped up, we have an extremely loyal customer base and there was a lot of pent-up demand during the pandemic, so it’s been amazing to get our guests back onto the rivers and on tour this season.
“We’re seeing strong 2023 bookings too – particularly for our longer haul destinations such as river cruising on the Mekong and our tours in Canada and Alaska.”
He said new customers have been attracted thanks in part to the Travelmarvel brand.
“Travelmarvel’s flexible, four-star travel style is a superb sales opportunity for the trade, so a key part of our BMDs’ remit will be to familiarise agents with the programme and help them to drive sales,” he commented.
“We celebrated APT’s 95th anniversary in August, so this year has been the perfect time for us to launch many exciting new innovations.
“These included the maiden season for three new Travelmarvel Contemporary River Ships, which have already proven to be disruptors in Europe.
“We’ve also launched our first ship sailing programme in Croatia, which has sold extremely strongly – we had to quadruple capacity since we first announced the new product, adding new itineraries and a second yacht.
“We have also expanded into new destinations, including Egypt, Jordan and Israel for the first time, and January will see the unveiling of our hotly anticipated new ship in Asia, the Mekong Serenity.”
When appointed, the new BDMs will be responsible for account management, building and maintaining relationships, training, product awareness, consumer and agent events, leading familiarisation trips for the trade.
The Inside Sales team will be responsible for agent support, joint marketing campaigns, incentives, new partner set-ups, training and planning events.
“Working with the trade is of the utmost importance to our business, and we want to ensure that we are supporting our partners across the country equally,” said Bennetts.
“The Midlands and the north are large booking drivers for the travel industry, so it is very important for us to have more visibility there.”
He said there has been a “spectacular response” from agents to recent incentives.
“We ended up extending our 95th anniversary incentive across additional days to give as many agents as possible the opportunity to redeem their Love2Shop voucher codes,” he said.
“Our Autumn Time to Escape incentive, which gives agents the chance to win one of two cruises, is performing strongly.
“We are predicting a strong Q4 and even stronger peaks, and will be supporting the trade with some fantastic incentives to help them make the most of sales at this critical period; watch this space for more details.”
APT is also recruiting elsewhere in the business, especially in its marketing and call centre departments.