G Adventures staff have “done everything we can” to support UK travel agents during the Covid crisis, with sales support, data about trends – and advice to be “a goldfish”.
Founder Bruce Poon Tip said the adventure travel specialist has worked hard to support agents to generate business despite the challenges they face.
Speaking on a Travel Weekly webcast, he said: “We get constant letters from agents who are telling us that they didn’t think that people would book.
“They work with one of our GPSs [Global Purpose Specialist, a local salesperson] who is there beside you, to help you and your clients discover more passion, purpose, and happiness and you manage to get people to commit to travel.”
He also said agencies have responded “really well” to its G-Normous incentive, which was opened up to the full UK and Ireland agent community for the first time this year.
“We’ve had a reason to communicate with them. It gives them the ability to start talking to their customers,” he said.
“The best thing for us to do…is to help agents understand the recovery, because we have data that they don’t have access to, because we can see patterns of people wanting to travel in July, August.
“We can talk to them about that, and we add dates, trips and component trips, and the flexibility of the ‘Book with Confidence and ‘Book your Bubble’ programmes.”
He added: “We can help them so much by talking about the science of rapid testing, and countries that are open or closed; there is so much for them to learn.
“It is going to be so complex…the drop of quarantine for returning home can be slow. The agent has to be on top of all of that.”
He is also a regular tweeter about industry trends and recently tweeted advice “to be a goldfish”.
Explaining the tweet, he said it comes from an Apple TV series called Ted Lasso, about an American coach who comes to England to run a struggling English soccer team.
“It’s all about leadership, and inspiring people to be their best – and one of his lessons is about being a goldfish,” he said.
“He keeps telling people, when they lose, that they have to forget about it, because the goldfish has the shortest memory of any living creature in the world.
“Sometimes in life and in leadership, you have to just forget the losses, and you just have to move on.
“Adversity is our opportunity to grow…2020 was just a disaster year but it taught us so much.
“Get your learnings, look forward and be a goldfish.”