Travel Counsellors’ charismatic CEO Steve Byrne is always moving the business forward. During his time at the Travel Counsellors’ conference in Adelaide, he shared the five major investments he would be making.
Steve said the changes he has pinpointed will see TC ripen into a business that has a richer mix of both the leisure and corporate markets, more complex higher booking values and more choices about how TCs work.
Let’s take a closer look.
1. Investing more in corporate travel
Steve said at present about 25% of the work Travel Counsellors do is corporate and 75% is leisure. Ideally, he’d like to see a 50/50 split.
Currently, the corporate side of the business is worth around $250 million dollars out of their $1.1 billion TTV. He’d like to raise that to about half a billion dollars.
“From all of the research that we’ve done, the market for small to medium sized businesses is not served well by other travel management companies,” Steve explained.
“And these kind of businesses suit our high service model.”
2. More premium leisure sales
Steve said a major goal this year was to develop more premium product offerings.
“We sell every type of holiday but we see the growth in more luxury, tailor-made holidays with a higher average booking value and more complexity.”
“We can achieve this by moving away from the cheaper package product – a product that carries more risk of customers wanting to do it themselves and do it online”.
3. Travel Counsellors personal productivity
This investment will be threefold.
Firstly it will be through the creation of personal development programs, secondly, it will be through investment in technology, including a personal dashboard on their PHENIX platform which runs a constant health check on their business. The third element is the evolution in their operating model where Travel Counsellors can partner with other Travel Counsellors to set up reciprocal commercial arrangements with each other.
4. Enhancing services provided to Travel Counsellors
This is about making sure all Travel Counsellors have everything they need – negating the need for them to have to go anywhere else to meet the needs of their customer.
This means Travel Counsellors will continue to invest in technology so that TCs will have more of what they need at the time they need it.
5. Targeted recruitment of more Travel Counsellors
Steve said this was about positioning themselves to target the right quality of person who buys into a model where they put the customer first.
“It’s not about how many people we get, but about how they can support the team” Steve said.
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