Experts charge for their services. A tradie will charge you just to quote on a job, a financial planner charges (and we happily pay), and yet there are still many travel advisors not charging for their services, their expertise, and their experience. That has to end now, agents were told at Express Travel Group’s Reconnect 2022 conference in Melbourne on Friday.
Travel advisors are “experts in the field”, ETG CEO Tom Manwaring told guests of the event, which was held at W Melbourne.
“Customers are going to be coming to you in droves for your experience, so be proud of it and charge for it,” he urged.
To Manwaring, the worth of the travel advisor must be valued and elevating travel agents in the mind of the consumer is paramount.
“We are part of the service industry, and we deserve to receive remuneration equal to the experiences and the care we’re giving to our customers,” he said.
But it’s not just consumers that have to change their way of thinking about travel advisors; agents themselves also need to shift their business mindsets, RAA Travel General Manager Travel and Distribution Gina Norman said at the conference.
According to Norman, advisors need to place a value on what they do and qualify that value.
And consumers are happy to pay for expertise and convenience. They have historically paid tradespeople for their skills and have paid for the convenience of more recent services such as online grocery shopping.
Need for more automation
Agents just have to let go of the legacy way of doing business, Manwaring said.
Back in the old days, commissions were bigger. Today, airline commissions often aren’t worth the time an advisor is on hold to make one of the many changes flying in this new world requires.
And it’s not just monetary remuneration agents need. According to Manwaring, travel advisors are spending time doing tasks manually when they could be automated.
“We need more support. We can’t be doing work under negative earnings,” he said.
He also joked that there has got to be a better system than advisors still issuing tickets “under the Warsaw Convention and 1952 protocols”.
Express Travel Group represents the largest group of independent travel agencies in Australia. These members form the company’s core agency groups: Select Travel Group, Independent Travel Group, Independent Travel Advisors and the italktravel & cruise retail franchise network.
For more information, visit: etg.travel.
