Titan Travel’s new trade distribution director, Shane Lewis-Riley, has dubbed 2025 “the year of more” as he ramps up support, training and fam trips for agent partners.
He told a Travel Weekly webcast how he plans to put more space between the escorted tour operator and its competitors by investing in improvements for the trade and promoting its products more effectively.
“At the Globes [award ceremony], we talked about ‘the year of more’, and the year of more has already started,” he said.
“Already in January, we are 35% up year on year on a very strong January last year.
“That gives me even more confidence that the trade can be doing even more for Titan.
“It’s investment…which led to us announcing the ‘year of more’: more people on the road, more fam trips, more training, including online training and partnering with [Travel Weekly] sister brand Online Travel Training.”
He also promised an online one-stop-shop for agents, commenting: “We need one single place to drive our agent partners to. It is a little bit disjointed right now.
“We are going to be focused in the next two months to get a place where we can direct our trade partners to easily access editable content for social media.
“This is part of what I am calling Brilliant Basics, which is the main focus for the first half of this year, having a portal that you can make great bookings on, but also has all of the tools that you would expect [and] enhancing our Titan trade rewards.”
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He said “lots more fam trips” will be key too, adding: “Seeing is believing, I’ve always stood by that.
“I am also keen to get user-generated content from our trade partners, so when the travel agent partners are on tours, we can use their stories to further inspire the rest of our travel agents…to spread our messages.
“We have got a really solid plan with ‘the year of more’ and it is our firm commitment to them: that is our manifesto…it is an exciting year ahead.”
He added: “The key thing is being confident around what we stand for and tell our story better.
“Where we’ve been lacking in the past is being able to have that confidence to say we know where we’re going, we know the improvements that we need to make.”