The chief executive of Cosmos Tours has urged travel agents to focus on selling high-value, more complex holidays rather than cheap, simple packages.
“Selling a volume of £500-£600 holidays, you are on a hiding to nothing,” Giles Hawke told the audience at Abta’s Travel Convention in Marrakech.
“You are not adding value with a simple point-to-point with a hotel.
“Sell high value, with more than one or two elements attached – add value with your knowledge.”
He said his company is developing more marketing partnerships with agents and offering a “huge amount of training”.
“Those [agents] who are really proactive, organising consumer events and understanding our products, do very well,” he told a panel, moderated by Lucy Huxley, editor-in-chief, Travel Weekly Group.
He said not enough agents recognise the “huge value” of focusing on sectors such as touring, adventure and river cruise, where they can earn “a lot of money”.
He said the proportion of agency sales has gone up from 50% when he joined in 2016 to about 65% now.
“Our customers are well educated and curious – they just need someone to help them and tell them the best options.”
Fellow panellist Ben Bouldin, EMEA vice-president at Royal Caribbean International, said direct sales rose during the pandemic but he hopes agency sales will recover.
The number of agents selling Royal Caribbean International cruises in his market is about 40% lower than in 2018-2019.
“The travel trade is not back fully yet, it is creeping back,” he told the delegates.
“When trade gets back to doing what it does well, it will address the balance. We need the trade to come back.”
He highlighted how he and Hawke had attended the InteleTravel conference in Belfast earlier this month because both recognised the advantages of home-based networks.
“They have got a significant role to play; InteleTravel has a wide variety of different agents,” he commented.
“We need as much distribution as possible.”
Chris Wright, Sunvil Group managing director, said his operator had taken on a new business development manager to help increase sales via agents.
He pointed out how agents were side-tracked with the spate of airline cancellations this year but hopes that will be sorted so they will be “freed up for more sales capacity” in 2023.
The panellists also talked about how their own companies’ work practices had changed since the pandemic, with Royal Caribbean and Sunvil operating hybrid offices, and Cosmos using a “work from anywhere” model.
Hawke said he now has staff working across the country rather than with a 10-mile radius of Bromley.
Some younger staff had moved on as they preferred an office environment but it meant the operator had recruited more mature people in customer service and contact centre roles.
Bouldin said office working helps colleagues with collaboration and generating ideas around the water cooler.
Photo credit: Arif Gardner