Triton conference special: All aboard for a moan about direct sales

Comment by Jeremy Skidmore (www.jeremyskidmore.com)
 

Forget ‘Life on Mars’ or ‘Ashes to Ashes’, if you want a real nostalgia trip, just pitch up to a question and answer session at a travel agent conference.

And so it proved when moderator Alastair Stewart went to the floor during the panel session at the Triton event in Palma.

“Why do your brochures carry direct numbers and why do you bypass us, etc, etc,” came the cry.

Ah, it took me back to 20 years ago – when I could stay up all night at a conference without any ill effects the next day, flared safari suits were all the rage for business people and the questions were exactly the same. Only back then, they seemed quite relevant.

Had these people arrived by Tardis? Did they not know the world had changed? To expect an operator to turn their back on any direct sales is, frankly, beyond belief. They’re not in the business of decimating their profits when so many customers want the choice of how to book.

But, as former retailer Andrew Dickson says, it doesn’t matter. If you are good at sales and customer service, you’ll prosper anyway.

If I want a new computer or television, I’ll go to John Lewis and get some advice from some sharp technical people in their London store. Then I’ll decide what model I want and buy it on the Internet at a discount. We all do.

But you know what, I buy things on a John Lewis credit card and I go back into that shop and buy other items several times a year, because I trust them and I often do like the security of buying from them.

There are some very good independent agents, like Helen Burgess from Pursers and Didsbury Travel, who cleverly markets herself in her local area. And there are some rubbish agents. I don’t know about the people who asked the direct sell questions – they may be very successful – but as Dickson pointed out, there are still independents who offer dreadful customer service and live in the dark ages about how operators should behave.

Wake up and smell the coffee if you want to stay in business.

Elsewhere at the Triton conference, some questioned the point of the organisation because the different consortia are now handling their own negotiations.

Of course there is point to Triton – it gives every agent access to their own in-house products and, from now, an ATOL scheme. Scale is crucial and that alone makes the organisation worthwhile.

And people have short memories. Without Triton to protect their interests post-commission cutting, the independent sector would be far worse off. Back in the days when questions about direct sell were first being asked, there was no-one to really stick up for the small guys and they were duly given a good kicking.

The three Triton directors – Andrew Botterill, Colin Heal and John McEwan – did a good job of handling difficult questions and were honest about why a merger hadn’t come about.

For that reason, along with the closed shop sessions to answer members’ queries, the conference was a success.

McEwan had the toughest time, trying to fend off questions about why he had encouraged Advantage members to stay away. By the end of the conference, he had gone full circle and was paraded as the new chairman of Triton! But such a good salesman he is, that by the end it all somehow seemed strangely plausible.

There was hardly a dry eye in the house when dear old Colin Heal stepped down after three years as chairman and was presented with a limited edition bust of his hero, Winston Churchill.

As Colin held the bust up, I mused how one of the great man’s (Winston’s) famous quotes would be apt in the current difficult economic climate: “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”