Trade under fire for neglecting coach holidays
WA Shearings sales and marketing director Karen Gee has attacked the trade for its lack of enthusiasm in selling coach holidays and told agents to wise up to the wishes of their customers.
The company, formed out of the merger of Wallace Arnold and Shearings, sells around one million holidays a year, around 90% of them through the trade.
The average cost of its coach holidays are around £400 each, so the company is paying tens of millions of pounds in commission.
Gee said WA Shearings was not getting the backing it deserved and coach holidays did not receive the same profile as cruises, despite being a bigger market.
“Many people in the trade don’t know anything about coach holidays – they know more about Koh Samui than the UK,” said Gee. “I’ve been into travel agents where the UK section is located behind the bin and they’ve lumped our European holidays in the same section. It’s very frustrating that many of them have decided to promote cruising and ignore coaching, which is a more popular holiday.”
Gee said counter clerks and senior staff at retailers were to blame for the lack of promotion of coach holidays in the UK and Europe.
“Counter staff tend to be younger people and have no interest in coaching, but it’s time they listened to their customers instead of trying to sell them holidays that they like,” said Gee.
“Also retailers have got a problem on the marketing and commercial side. They are often run by young people who write off the older age group. I don’t think they’ve fully grasped the situation. We always pay over 10% commission, we have six regional sales managers on the road and we take care of agents. What are we getting in return?”
Report by Jeremy Skidmore
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