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Caudwell tells agents: pay staff well or fail
Monday, 25 Nov, 2005
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ABTA Convention special report: Mobile phones boss John Caudwell has told travel agents to get out of the industry if they can’t afford to pay decent salaries to their staff.
Caudwell, owner of the biggest independent mobile phone retailer in Europe, the Caudwell Group, is a keynote speaker at the ABTA Convention in Marrakech. He said agents would fail by paying low wages for inexperienced staff.
“My philosophy has always been to keep tight control of costs. but pay people very well and expect them to deliver results,” he said.
“If you pay people well they deliver more benefits to the business. You should never start cutting wages. It’s a vicious circle and you’ll get nowhere because people are the most important part of the business. If you can’t make it work by paying well, then get out of the industry and do something else instead, because you won’t succeed.”
Caudwell said that service levels on the high street were generally poor.
“Travel agents and other retailers do not generally give a good service, but they need to if they want to attract customers.”
He said agents’ business would grow if they became recommended by people who had been treated well. he also urged retailers to offer added value to customers, through insurance policies and good deals.
In his speech at the Convention, Caudwell said six critical attributes were necessary for success – ambition, drive, passion, resilience, commercial intellect and leadership.
“Drive and ambition are not necessarilly the same thing, because you can be driving for the wrong thing,” he said. “You need passion. When I was starting my business, I worked 20 hours a day and you need resilience to cope with that.
“Commercial intellect is difficult to put your finger on, but it’s an ability to get a level playing field and always tilt it in your favour.”
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