It’s a great time in Collette’s 105-year history. The company is experiencing “incredible” growth, adding close to 200 new employees worldwide. And according to its Executive Vice President of Global Business, Christian Leibl-Cote, Collette is investing significantly in Aussie agents.
“At Collette, we understand how time-poor agents are,” he tells Karryon.
“We want to make their lives easier. That’s why we’ve invested in more staff and more technology. We want agents to have the answers they need when they (and their clients) need them.”
Karryon got the lowdown on this investment and Collette’s other initiatives from Leibl-Cote:
Collette’s commitment to travel advisors is a message we keep hearing. How are you manifesting this support?
One of the things that we’ve done is to pay agents commission on deposits, so up to $100 per person. And the best part is that we don’t recall it ever. So if the clients cancel or we have to cancel the trip, agents get to keep that money because we want to recognise their hard work prior to the booking.
This idea came out of the pandemic when we saw agents suffering because they had to pay back commissions. We wanted to make sure that we work with our agency partners because they’ve been tremendous to us. And we want to protect them which is why we refunded over $260 million in cash to any guests that wanted to have a full refund. We didn’t hesitate.
How has the pandemic changed the way Collette operates?
We were able to become much more efficient as a company. And we were also able to look at how we could help our travel partners.
Right now we’re working on our website. We have our gateway where our agents are going to be able to go in and, for example, see their invoices right away. If they want to add things to their bookings, they can just do it right there from the website.
Collette also invested significantly in our call centre throughout the whole crisis. And now we still average three-minute wait times. That is extremely important for us, so we devoted substantial resources. We started hiring in August of 2020 in the call centre, and at that time the market was completely closed. So we invested heavily in that to make sure that we were ready for when the markets would start reopening and it’s worked really well for us.
Overall, I think people in the industry got very, very close to each other. We helped each other and it’s made us, as an industry, stronger.
It’s hard to say this but COVID was kind of a blessing in disguise. It’s made the industry stronger. It’s made our company stronger. And you look at the product that we’re offering and all the investments that we’ve made, and they’re so exciting. We’re all very excited.
What are some of the challenges facing touring today?
People don’t necessarily understand touring. They think they can do it on their own or think they want to do it on their own. But touring is just a great way to travel. You don’t have to worry about anything. And more importantly, you get to do some unique experiences that you wouldn’t be able to do on your own.
I’ll give you an example. I got to go truffle hunting in Umbria in a little town with a group of 16 of us. The town was 3,000 meters up in the mountains. Only 60 people live there. It’s been there since the year 1400 and they’ve owned the land for that long. So we went truffle hunting for two hours with five hunters and their dogs. They made fresh scrambled eggs and shaved the truffle over the top. And they had 20 bottles of Prosecco for 16 of us. When we got back to the town the mayor was waiting for us. It’s the first time they’ve ever had a woman mayor. And she started making fresh pasta with wild boar caught the day before. So it was an incredible all-day experience. And something you couldn’t have done on your own. This is what we organise.
We organise things like these unique experiences so that you can go back home and say, ‘I got to do something that nobody else in my area has done. And I didn’t have to worry about anything’.
Everything is taken care of for you. And we’ve slowed down the pace significantly so that you’re not moving every day. You’re not going to multiple countries. We want you to be immersed in the destination.
How important is that immersion and that connection these days?
It’s not like it was 15 or 20 years ago when it was a case of, if it’s Belgium, then it must be Tuesday, right? Australians are travelling to Europe multiple times. And they want to be able to really discover Europe and be part of the culture.
Just last week we had bookings where people were buying four tours at the same time. Back to back to back. So we had one couple book Egypt and Jordan, and then Morocco and then Spain and then Italy. And then we had another couple book three different tours. So we’re seeing that where people are spending six, seven weeks at a time in Europe. And that’s something that is unique to Australia compared to all the other markets.
2019 was a great year for Collette. 2023 is better. And small exploration tours or private tours are really growing fast.
Because people are asking for tours that offer a deeper connection. To me, travel is the greatest educator and touring provides exactly that because you get to immerse yourself in the destination.
And we use the best hotels that are strategically placed in the area so that when you have some free time you can just enjoy the destination. You actually create your own trip within a tour.
And what is Collette doing to future-proof our planet?
All 47 of our exploration tours are carbon neutral. And we have some very strict guidelines from the social responsibility point of view.
We also provide reusable water bottles and containers, and provide water for all of our customers. And we work very closely with all of our hotels to ensure we avoid single-use plastics.
And we don’t want to be a party to animal cruelty. For example, we actually walked away from the stampede in Canada. That’s something that we used to sell a tremendous amount of and we no longer offer it. Our customers can do it on their own if they want to. But that’s something that we feel that’s extremely important.
If you had one message for the travel industry in Australia and New Zealand, what would that be?
Have fun right now. Have fun. I know everybody’s busy. But it’s an exciting time and people are going to want to come into the industry. This is the opportunity to show that the industry is going to be an extremely strong industry. It is already, so let’s have fun with it together.
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