TTA appeals to agents but how did Hoberman fare? Comment by Jeremy Skidmore

The Travel Trust Association conference is nowhere the size or stature of the ABTA Convention, but it does have one big advantage over Newman Street’s event.

The TTA knows its audience and, consequently, can focus on issues that are important to them.

The Orlando convention was disappointing partly because it tried to be all things to all people.

I have to declare an interest here. I moderated the TTA conference, but the success of it had little to do with me as I was merely a hired hand rather than the organiser.

The issues debated – whether package holidays have had their day and the dilemma over brochure wastage – are hardly new topics. But they are important to TTA agents and consequently produced some interesting points.

It is quite staggering that in 2004 we have such a huge number of brochures going to waste.

Lee Harrison of Select World Travel in Malvern told me of how a fork lift truck was needed to deliver a palette of cruise brochures when he could only possibly use a few of them.

At the other extreme, bureaucracy prevents agents from getting hold of a small number of programmes when they need them. Hapless retailers get passed from distribution house to operator but fail to get the deliveries they need.

It seems that no-one is faultless and agents, operators and distribution houses need to communicate better if the problem is to be solved.

The interview with Brent Hoberman, chief executive of lastminute.com, produced some sparky moments but I wonder how many agents were convinced that his company was worth backing.

In the past few months, lastminute.com has started cuddling up to agents and encouraging them to book with holidayandmore.com after years of being the guys who cut out the middle man.

For me, that begged the question about whether the company could be trusted to continue supporting agents and also suggested that the strategy of pushing everything through lastminute.com simply wasn’t working.

Hoberman seemed ruffled by those suggestions and his usual charm deserted him as he dismissed the questions, criticised journalists and trotted out all number of statistics to prove how well the company was doing.

I’ve got no problem at all with interviewees having a pop at journalists – we’ve got big egos and give as good as we get – but I wonder how that strategy comes across to agents.

One angry retailer complained about the service received from Holiday Autos and others had tales of problems with Med Hotels.

Instead of insisting that these issues be kept in context and spouting yet more statistics about satisfaction levels, the audience would have warmed more to Hoberman had he accepted the problems and pledged to sort them out and improve the product in the future.

There was a danger of Hoberman coming across as self-satisfied which is unfortunate because he’s better than that – most people find him charming and personable.

But sometimes it doesn’t hurt to eat a bit of humble pie, especially when you are trying to curry favour with agents who, quite rightly, are naturally suspicious about being courted by a former rival.