It’s time for Advantage to join the big league – TravelMole Guest Comment by president-elect Peter Reglar

The Advantage presidential election is now behind us and we can all focus our attention on the constitutional changes that lie ahead.

Now, more than at any other time, the organisation needs strong, visionary leadership and as president-elect, I believe passionately that the new constitution is right for the continued viability of both Advantage and its members.

If we are going to continue to affect the shape of the market place, we have three important internal issues to address first:

*We will increasingly need to be thinking more strategically, planning for the profitable growth of the organisation at least three years ahead. We should also be encouraging our members to consider their own businesses in a similar way.

*We need to be generating profits partly so that we can return dividends to the membership, but also so that we can create new income streams. This will enable us for example, to further develop our website and drive Advantage Financial Services, our insurance company, more aggressively.

*Extensive research amongst the membership has indicated that we need to do more about understanding the need of members on the one hand, and tailoring our offering to them on the other. Our new structure will help us to achieve this – in an alliance such as Advantage, on size does not fit all.

Our streamlined, more efficient and commercial structure has wider objectives, many of which are concerned with the organisation’s influence within the industry and within the market place.

Greater cohesion and shared sense of purpose will enable us to capitalise on the consumer trend away from ‘big and packaged’ towards ‘small and tailored’.

Independents can promise a level of professionalism, expertise and flexibility that big companies find hard to match. The trick will be to engender a more integrated commercial outlook and deliver a more consistent ‘brand promise’ without compromising the local positioning of our members.

Advantage has come a long way in the last 25 or so years. We have become more formalised and much more of a force within the travel industry. This is partly because we have never been afraid to adapt our organisation or our constitution to the changing commercial environment.

The large companies are less flexible and their offering is becoming passé. The consumer is acquiring an ‘independent’ mind-set and if we are well organised and increasingly commercially aggressive, we can create a platform in the market place which will change the face of the industry for ever.