Gold Medal Travel is to launch a live chat facility in the coming months as it looks to develop more ways for agents to contact the operator.
Managing director Simon Applebaum said the company was keen to “evolve with agents” so they could communicate with its reservations team in a way that suits them.
“Some, including many homeworkers, want to fire off an email, others want to chat on the phone, and now we’re going to have a live chat option as well. It’s another way for agents to talk to us,” he said.
“The loyalty agents show Gold Medal team members is so strong. They don’t book with Gold Medal, they book with Gemma or Tom, or whoever they have built a strong relationship with.
“Some of these are decades‑old relationships where there’s an absolute trust between the agent and our sales team member.”
Speaking at Gold Medal’s Big Day Out VIP event for agents and partners last week, Applebaum said the operator recruited 43 staff last year as it rebounded from the pandemic.
The live chat option will be another way for agents to talk to us
“Some of them had no experience, but because [we can] put them in a dedicated team, such as the US, Australia or cruise, which means their knowledge develops rapidly,” he added.
“They can really specialise by selling hundreds of the same destination or sector, and that has allowed us to recover from the pandemic quicker than most.”
Applebaum said he was seeing “more and more agents coming back to Gold Medal”, adding: “These are agents who were maybe left upset by the T2 [Travel 2] consolidation [in 2020]. But we’re now moving forward again and you almost want to touch wood as things have been so positive.”
Applebaum said future plans included expanding the partners and product offered by its Cruise Plus and Incredible Journeys brands and “deepening the service proposition” of its Pure Luxury programme.
“We’re bringing more operators into the portfolio, which enables us to offer more Atol-protected packages,” he said, citing recent deals with Wendy Wu Tours and Explora Journeys in the Incredible Journeys stable and nicher lines in the Cruise Plus range.
“We’ve probably got the most complete offering in terms of cruise partners, and when you combine that with our ground product, our ability to put cruise-and-stay packages together is unrivalled,” he said.