The Midcounties Co-operative has seen closer ties develop over the past six months between its retail agents, homeworkers and suppliers in its Co-operative Travel Consortium.
And it aims to develop that coordination to boost sales as travel emerges from the lockdown, said Phil Ponsonby, group chief executive at The Midcounties Co-operative.
The travel division has 78 branches, the Co-op Holidays tour operation, 165 Personal Travel Agents (PTAs) and more than 140 members of the Co-operative Travel Consortium.
Speaking at a Travel Weekly webcast, he said: “Our consortium members [are] bringing forward offers to our retail business or to our PTA network, and all of a sudden, everybody [is] working together for the greater good of the collective.”
He said some of this has been spearheaded by Alistair Rowland – the former chief retail officer for Midcounties’ specialist businesses, who left in 2020 to become chief executive of Co-operative Travel Consortium member Blue Bay Travel.
Ponsonby said: “That represents a really nice opportunity for us, long term, because it just shows that we can provide services using the combination of our different channels and our different areas of business, rather than seeing them as individual silos and running them completely separately.
“We can start to join them together and use that to our advantage.
“We are focused on sales more than ever, because every sale is so important.
“We’re just making the best of each of these elements and bringing them together rather than trying to run them as completely separate components. And that’s the strength of it.”
Another key benefit is the group’s reputation and brand, and how it responded to problems as the Covid-19 crisis hit last year.
“We couldn’t have asked any more of our teams in terms of the things they’ve done in the last year, to respond to customer situations, to bring them back home from locations, to help them in times of difficulty,” said Ponsonby.
“I think that that serves us well, and it will continue to serve us well.
“Keeping in contact, keep communicating and being there for the person, not hiding behind emails or websites and actually having real people to talk to, that for me has been a really important thing.
“Our branding and our longevity and trust will play a big part. But I think, more than anything, the way that our travel team have looked after their customers in the last year will be the most important thing going forward.”
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Sara Dunham, chief officer of travel and leisure services at The Midcounties Co-operative, replaced Rowland when she joined the travel business last month.
She said there is “a lot of pent-up demand” among consumers, who are reacting to the “news cycle” of announcements following the government’s roadmap out of lockdown.
“We definitely saw a bounce in enquiries and in bookings for late summer ’21; we are seeing the interest convert into sales,” she said.
Announcements about destinations such as Cyprus and Portugal are also affecting demand, she said.
“The key thing is going to be working out how can we help and enable customers to travel, depending on what government restrictions are.
“Anecdotally, we’re getting a lot of feedback that that’s something customers are really looking for at the moment. From an agency network, that’s a really strong USP from a customer point of view.”
She also highlighted a “big shift” for the PTAs to sell more through social media channels.
“We’ve really seen that change in the last six months,” she said.
“They have their own personal brands but we’ve been able to support with marketing materials and offers…and also being able to share best practice and how to use social.”