Travel agent bosses have been able to offer their staff more wellness support, trips and activities over the past year as the pressures of the pandemic have eased.
Agents told a Travel Weekly webcast how the Covid crisis had highlighted the importance of mental health – and how having more fun can boost workplace morale.
Tony Mann, director of Idle Travel in Bradford, said all his staff managed to go on a trip last year and more are planned for 2023. He also took his team and their families on a llama trekking excursion on the moors.
“I’ve gone back to thinking travel is a fun place to work,” he told the webcast.
“They need to enjoy working here because it’s a hard, pressurised job.
“They’re good to me, they’ll look after me. I need to look after them.”
The staff also held a series of fun competitions during December, called the ‘12 Days of Christmas’, which created a buzz online and encouraged involvement from customers.
“That was brilliant. It was all over social media,” said Mann.
“We want to put the fun back into travel.”
He reported 2022 was a record year and bookings over the turn-of-year were strong, so he might be able to recruit another member of staff during 2023.
Lisa Henning, managing director of Inspire Europe, told the webcast about the firm’s new wellbeing programme, which launched last September.
It supports staff at the Cheshire-based company with their physical, mental and financial wellbeing, and raises awareness of a different wellbeing topic each month.
“The team is the most important part of my role,” she said.
“I have to create an environment where they’re happy, and – as Tony said – where it’s fun, as it has been so stressful.
“I want people who want to come in and want to sell holidays because you can feel that – the consumers feel it, you can feel it, the buzz in the office.
“The wellbeing programme has been a huge part of that…and I’m really, really proud of it.
“I’m super happy with our team.”
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Gemma Antrobus, owner of Haslemere Travel in Surrey, told the webcast: “I think we’re through the really fraught, panic stage where, every day, it felt like your head was so full it was going to burst – and everybody was the same.
“I feel like we’re getting back to more of a pattern of the normality of booking holidays.”
She said the agency is “leaner” now than before Covid and saw its most profitable ever year in 2022.
Sales have continued to be strong over the peaks selling period so she may also be able to recruit later in 2023.
She admitted recruitment remains “a bit of a challenge” but added: “Now, having had a really good year, and the travel industry not being slated in the press all the time, I think it will attract people back into the industry.”
Mann commented: “Let’s enjoy it. Because it is fun, isn’t it? We meet up; the [Travel Weekly] Globes are coming; it’s great.
“We are in a fantastic industry and we get to places that I never ever thought I would.”