Take a breath! And take care of yourself. These were two persistent themes that emerged during ACTA’s 2021 Travel Industry Summit, held virtually over two days at the end of last week. After all, as one commentator observed, in times of crisis, “affix your own oxygen mask first!”
Certainly, the forum ventured beyond the mental health and wellness of its participants and was filled with tons of tips and practical advice for navigating the current stage of the pandemic, with the overall crisis duly designated as – and not for the first time – the worst in travel history.
But that executive leadership coach Jonathan McCready was invited to share “valuable models and serviceable grounding techniques” to help agents on the “emotional side of things” during these turbulent times in one of the keynote addresses spoke volumes.
Or as TPI CEO Zeina Gedeon summarized in a panel discussion: “Don’t sweat the small stuff. Always remember, we’re all this together, whether it’s as suppliers or travel agents. We need to stay mentally healthy… some stuff is not worth getting aggravated over.”
Not that agents don’t have their issues, observed many of the speakers – with clients, and suppliers, and governments, and rules/regulations and circumstances that seemingly change by the minute and are often beyond their control.
To that end, over a dozen speakers from different niches – leisure, corporate, airlines, cruise, insurance, tour operators – weighed in with insights on where the industry has been during the past year and a half, where it is now, and where it is likely to be going.
To draw any kind of consensus amongst them would generally be to state the belief that the industry is beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“Things are looking better than they have in the past 18 months,” said Transat Distribution Canada president Joe Adamo, while Christine James, VP Travel Leaders Network Canada concurred, stating, “I feel like we’re definitely on the upside of this challenge.”
Air Canada executive VP and CCO Lucie Guillemette feels “there are signs of recovery all around us,” including the re-opening of the Canadian borders, which she acknowledged may not help travel agents in this country directly, but does instill confidence in the marketplace that normalcy is returning.
Company research, she added, suggests that 86% of Canadians are already planning their next flight, six out of 10 of them for leisure purposes – numbers borne out by the Conference Board of Canada, whose senior research association Jennifer Hendry reported that almost 90% of Canadians surveyed say they miss travel and that short-term excursions (though mostly domestic) are gaining traction and booking windows are shortening; and for those who are travelling, length of trips are increasing.
Other notable survey trends include a waning of health concerns over travel as vaccinations rise, but confusion over travel regulations emerging as a major worry for travellers. As for the later, nine in 10 believe that travel should be restricted to the vaccinated and 80% check vaccination rates in prospective destinations. And when Canadians do travel internationally, they are likely to choose the US first.
As for real-world bookings, Transat Distribution’s Adamo said leisure business was transitioning from 2022 and 2023 bookings in the summer into nearer term and “almost last-minute” travel, but also further out winter peaks periods like New Year’s and Spring Break (“a good sign”), including plenty of VFR, cruises, and sun destinations. “Overall, it’s pretty encouraging picture from the leisure market,” he said.
For Travel Leaders Network, the delta variant interrupted bookings that surged in August (+35%) but are now climbing again after having flattened out in the early fall, putting TLN slightly ahead of its future bookings for the same period in 2019, said James.
In her inimitable way, Gedeon said booking patterns were simply a “yo-yo… We see amazing sales, then delta comes along and everything crashes.” The federal election similarly cooled sales, but bookings in 2022 and onwards “look surprisingly healthy.”
An interesting trend, and TPI’s “biggest challenge,” Gedeon noted, was families booked for November and December changing dates because of fears of quarantine before the kids could go back to school.
Value of travel counsellors
Not surprisingly another theme of the Summit was the value of travel agents during the crisis, but more precisely that now more than ever, agents should be charging for their services.
“If you weren’t a believer before, I hope you’re a believer now: You need to charge for your time and service. Full stop,” said Adamo. “And you need to charge the right amount; I’m not talking about charging 25 bucks. You need to charge a legitimate fee for your services.”
Beyond charging for services, other tips for agents included:
• Take care of yourself – “make sure you’re healthy and happy when you’re dealing with your clients”
• Insurance is more important than ever for clients (and a way to earn extra commission with healthy margins); Jennifer Waver of Manulife noted that there are many webinars and tools designed to help agents learn and stay up to speed
• Keep in touch with existing clients; keep engagement up
• Stay informed, including training, as “things are changing all the time”
• Be flexible, especially with clients
• Because of the unpredictable nature and waves of the pandemic, ensure with the supplier that there are flexible/change options
• Work with suppliers
The latter, supplier relations, rated highly among topics at the Summit with CATO chair Brett Walker (Collette) hosting an entire session – “Restarting and Rebuilding your Relationship with Tour Operators” – on the subject.
Commissions
Foremost among issues from the agent side was an urgent call for operators to pay commissions upon booking, or even deposit.
“As an industry, we need to get back, at a minimum, to having commissions paid at final payment, as opposed to departure… The sooner off we can do that as industry, the better off we’re all going to be,” said Adamo, adding he understands the concerns operators would have paying even earlier (on deposit), but sees paying on final payment as perhaps the first step in creating a more equitable hybrid compensation system.
Gedeon says she’s a true believer that the agent-supplier relationship “has to work for both sides; it can’t work for one but not the other,” acknowledging “we’re going through rough times,” including manpower issues.
But “the bigger part,” she adds, is that “there are so many rules and conditions… it’s changing every minute. And from a supplier perspective they’re getting hammered with some of these questions that should not be their issue. But at the same time, it’s like a black hole – we make a booking and there’s a thousand things that we need to know. The biggest issue we’re having with some suppliers we have is sked changes. We had one agent sitting on the phone with a supplier for six hours just for a sked change.”
Her point is it, the relationship goes both ways. “Things have to be changed. We (agents) need to be better at doing work that should be ours, and also we need the travel suppliers to expedite some of these things that really shouldn’t take so long.”
From a corporate perspective, Patrick Doyle, VP & GM American Express Global Business Travel, Canada cited the need for continue supplier flexibility, urging “on demand” response and putting tools in the hands of advisors that are “more modern and a lot more efficient.” He added, “We have a lot of work to do.”
But if all seemed doom and gloom, there was optimism aplenty as well.
As the Conference Board’s Hendry reported, “While still a significant barrier, COVID-related factors are having less of an impact on travel planning than reported earlier in the crisis.”
She added that increased vaccination rates and enforced health and safety policies, along with eased border restrictions at home and abroad, along with solid economic expansion in Canada forecast for 2022, all adds up to travel trends continuing to improve, as evidenced by eight in 10 Canadian snowbirds saying that they plan to return to their winter nests down south this year.
In conclusion, she said, “Life is returning to some semblance of normalcy, but there still are some hurdles to overcome in the tourism world… Canadians do continue to wait to see what their options are, but they are increasingly searching for travel opportunities.
“There’s no doubt that there’s uncertainty in the market, but there’s also significant pent-up demand. And the key indicators are all moving in the right direction…. The Canadian outbound market is ready to travel, they’re just a bit reticent. They just need your reassurance, and your flexibility, and expert advice in order, to close the deal.”