Escorted touring operator Exoticca has cited an “encouraging start” to UK trade sales as it sets up a dedicated UK call centre team to take bookings from agents.
The premium mainstream touring specialist announced plans to work with the trade earlier this year with the appointment of Neil Sealy as managing director UK & Ireland.
The operator says it now has commercial agreements in place with most travel agency consortia while it has doubled the size of its trade team based in its Barcelona head office from 10 to 20 to include a number dedicated to the UK market. It has also increased its trade marketing team from two to four staff.
Sealy said: “We now have a dedicated team just for UK agents and we have trained up some of those who work with agents in the US so they can move across to talk to UK agents if needed.”
Currently, the majority of agent business – which accounts for 12% of the operator’s sales – comes from the trade in the US or Canada.
But Sealy is anticipating a sharp rise in UK agent business as a result of improvements to the company’s agent web portal and once a trade sales team is established on the road.
Most agents are expected to book via the portal while its call centre deals with bookings that cannot be made online and amendments and flight upgrades.
“Our portal is being upgraded to work with the different types of agent models in the UK so agents can easily book,” said Sealy, adding: “We have been up and running with the UK trade since the start of September so bookings are starting to build up, and we have a plan for an on the road trade team at the end of the year.”
Sealy said he had been “really encouraged” by the amount of UK agents who had signed up to work with the operator so far and the amount of bookings.
He said: “We have started getting bookings from all the consortia we have set up with. We’ve had good feedback on our system, that it’s very easy to use, and agents love the prices.
“We monitor the number of agents registering on the portal and it’s growing every day. We are doing more more marketing and raising awareness. The majority of agents have not even heard of us yet.”
Sealy said he was confident “word would spread” and pledged to support the trade with more offers while a loyalty scheme to reward agents based on trade volumes and fam trips are also planned for next year.
He said the company had a “firm belief” in travel agents as a result of its success with trade sales in the US and offered price parity to the trade and live prices in a bid to make luxury travel “as affordable as possible”.
Sealy added that the group’s tours tended to attract a younger demographic, including working professionals and families, than traditional escorted tour operators as a result of competitive prices and the flexible nature of its tours.