Online travel marketing firm Inspire My Holiday has created a ‘find an agent’ service for consumers to coincide with peaks.
The search tool, which goes live on Boxing Day, is designed to match potential customers with relevant travel agents to help book their next trip.
Users can filter agents by holiday type, class of holiday, agent location and destinations in which they specialise. A bio of the agent is viewable alongside their contact details.
The tool is similar to a traditional store locator but at an individual agent level – rather than a physical store.
The free service requires a registration process claimed to take less than 10 minutes to complete.
A soft-launch saw “several hundred” agents register from groups such as Flight Centre, Travel Counsellors, Advantage, PTS, Hays Travel and The Travel Network Group. Registrations are now open to all agents who sell travel to the UK consumer.
Inspire My Holiday, created in pre-pandemic 2019, believes more than one million consumers are set to be reached by the service next year against a backdrop of continued growth in homeworking and a crowded marketplace for retail travel agents.
Company founder Olly Lomas said: “It’s clear that opportunities for individual agents are extremely limited and we wanted to change this.
“The feedback and support from business owners has been incredible and we’re excited to launch ‘find an agent’ on Boxing Day, just in time for the peak sale period.
“We’re very proud of our unique search tool that offers consumers a quick way of finding a relevant destination specialist to book their next trip – whether they are an independent agent or part of a large travel brand.
“It takes under 10 minutes to register and doesn’t cost a penny, so it should be a no-brainer for anyone working in sales.”
Inspire My Holiday created a trade-only website in July, offering agents the ability to match destinations with clients’ needs and browse trade partners they can make enquiries with.