AITO Agents: from the frontline

Kirsty Taylor, administration and sales at RB Collection (Robert Broad Travel), talks about how her job has changed since she joined the industry.

"I began my career within the travel industry almost 20 years ago (whoops – showing my age!) at a small independent agency where the main tasks of the day involved booking ‘bucket and spade’ holidays to popular European beach resorts, with the odd long-haul destination thrown in for good measure.

Having moved on from there and spent the past 11 years at Robert Broad Travel, or as we are now known, RB Collection, I have realised that there is a lot more involved to this business that we call travel than I had originally anticipated. During my time at the agency, I have been extremely fortunate to visit the most amazing destinations and upon my return to the office, sell them to clients with first-hand knowledge and enthusiasm.

Although I loved selling, I have always had an interest in the administrative side of the business and, a few years ago, I made the decision to take a more ‘back office’ role within the company. Some people may consider this to be a downgrade but, to me, the after-sales care a client receives is just as important – if not more so – than the initial sale.

In recent times, a lot more responsibility and pressure has been put upon agents after the booking has been made, mainly by the large mainstream tour operators. Gone are the days when we received actual paper tickets from all of our suppliers and lovely wallets for our clients to make their holiday experience feel extra special. It is now up to us agents to print confirmation invoices, tickets and letters on behalf of certain, larger operators. In addition, we have the time-consuming task of providing passport details, next of kin information and inputting clients’ addresses and telephone numbers on to countless websites – all of which make my job all the more difficult, leaving me wishing I had many more hours in the day.

Often, it feels like the ‘big boys’ are working against us, but it’s different with the specialist operators. With AITO specialists, for example, I have the reassurance that I can rely upon them to look after our clients’ bookings, which makes all of the hard work we have done on every aspect of the booking extremely satisfying and worthwhile.

A happy customer should hopefully lead to further bookings, so agents and operators – let’s all work together to give our clients a holiday and service to remember!"