Agents must not be undervalued

As the Association of Independent Tour Operators returns from its overseas conference in Malta from November 28 to December 1, new member, African Pride, reflects on the association. David Holland, sales manager at African Pride on why travel agents must not be undervalued.

"I regularly visit and talk to travel agents – two of their most common concerns are tour operators selling direct and discounting.

Taking the latter first, we had a situation recently where one of our tours consultants was speaking to a travel agent – not an AITO member I hasten to add. The travel agent was with the client and a £12,000 plus tailor-made holiday to Africa was being confirmed. The client was heard to say: "that’s just what we want, please book that for us," followed by the agent’s response: "No problem and we will give you £300 discount". The client replied: "I wasn’t expecting that, thank you".

It was apparent that the agent obviously automatically discounts bookings, despite the fact that the client had advised them to go ahead and hadn’t even asked for – or expected – any money off. I wonder how long this agent will be in business?

The other matter of operators selling direct is a long-standing one. Nowadays, it is fair to say that travel agents will, in the main, accept that most operators will take direct business. Some operators actually go after and source direct business whereas others, like us, will take direct business should it come along. But there are two hard and fast rules that agents demand – firstly, that any direct advertising or marketing includes something along the lines of "please see your travel agent" in the contact details area and secondly, that there is price parity between the direct price and the price to the agent.

AITO’s Closer Ties Agreement, where operators agree to a level playing field on prices and thus agents don’t have to worry about direct discounts, was one of the reasons we were very happy to join AITO.

Some operators will offer lower prices for direct bookings and, when this is known, there is no doubt that agents vote with their feet and desert them for someone who values the relationship by not offering lower prices to direct clients.

Other operators, who are keen to support agents, go further than the level playing field across both direct and agent bookings and pay a referral fee or commission back to an agent if it can be identified that the direct booking originated from or came via a client’s contact with an agent. 

There are agents we deal with now with whom we have worked since we started in business in the late 1990s. The long-term benefit of valuing and respecting the agents’ role should not be under-estimated."