Despite everything, The Travel Agent Next Doors’ founder and president, Flemming Friisdahl, is optimistic and upbeat about the future of the industry in general. And for his company in particular, it is helpful – ‘lucky’ – he says, that the company came off its best year in 2019. It is financially secure, it has maintained its full complement of staff, and while yes, they have been fortunate, the company has also been really proactive. “So, we’re ahead of the game.”

Friisdahl agreed to a video interview with Travel Industry Today, and he was, as always, positive and enthusiastic. “We’re extremely sound,” he said, adding that even in the unlikely event of zero or negative sales they are financially secure.

“We’ve made that public. Our agents know it so that they feel confident that The Travel Agent Next Door is not going away”

The company employs 43 staff, and using all the government programs on offer, nobody has been laid off, terminated or furloughed, and certainly that is the way he expects it to remain at least until the end of the year.

“Every other host agency that I know of has laid people off. But for us, the team is what’s gotten The Travel Agent Next Door to where it’s at. So, without those staff, we wouldn’t be here.”

As for the travel agents Friisdahl says the company has been working with them a lot, “they’re our partners.”

One of the ways he believes agents will be helped is by getting members of parliament to understand what they do and what the current situation in the industry involves for travel agents. He is keen and proactive in trying to engage agents and MPs in video meetings.

It works like this: TTAND sets up a GoToMeeting with MPs and six to eight travel agents who, “tell a little story about the travel industry to keep it within 45 minutes.” Says Friisdahl.

“We talk about what’s going on within the travel industry, and how very much it has affected travel agents. How they are working for free right now. That they’re not just sitting around enjoying the CERB. They’re actually working their duffs off dealing with future travel credits, dealing with continuous cancellations of trips that are happening into August or September. That’s what they are dealing with.”

“We explain,” he says, “that if travel agents weren’t here a lot of consumers wouldn’t know where to go. They would literally start calling their MPs and saying, ‘What are you guys going to do to help us out?’”

Now, a group started by one of the TTAND agents called ”Association of Canadian Independent Travel Advisors “has been writing a lot of letters to the government and they are doing this in conjunction with ACTA.

Friisdahl also explains that The Travel Agent Next Door did an analysis of three years of sales – over $300 million of sales, which showed that the average time from when an initial deposit is put on a file to the final payment is considerable – 139 days.

“And, that’s the average. Doesn’t mean it can’t be a year, you know that.” He says. “But the average is 139 days. That’s from when the client puts a deposit down, to when the agent actually gets the money. We sent a letter to the government breaking it down into each category – from the deposit, to the final payment, to the departure date, to when they actually receive the money.

That is what he is trying to make the MPs realize when he is on calls with them. And it is working – some are remembering. He recalls telling an MP, “There’s a number I want you to remember, and the MP came right back with ‘139’ – so he actually knew the number.”

We asked when he thought people will start traveling again?

In Friisdahl’s opinion, there is no question there is a lot of pent up demand. Bookings have come in, though admittedly, “in March, we were negative quite a bit, obviously. April was okay. June was less. And July was almost even with negative and positive sales. Almost at zero, so our negative sales and positive are almost equalling out. And I would expect that for August we’ll start seeing positive sales and not so much negative.

“But I’m happy to see that Air Canada Vacations is flying. I’m happy to see them going down to the same places like Jamaica and certain places in Mexico. I’m happy to see that – it starts getting people thinking about travel. And when people come back from traveling, they’ll start talking about it.”

The big thing, says Friisdahl, is trying to work with the government to reduce or eliminate the 14-day self-isolation when travellers come back from a destination that’s safe, one considered on the same health level as Canada. For instance (parts of) Europe are considered the same as Canada.

“I’m not talking about going down to Florida or California. Not talking about going to the US. I’m talking about going to some places in Mexico or Jamaica. Not Brazil, obviously. But where it’s safe why are they having to self-quarantine for 14 days? Why not have consumers tested at the airport when they come home OR on the plane before they land? Doesn’t make sense.

He would also like the government to eliminate travel advisories to those places that are safe.

Friisdahl notes that the lack of a travel advisory wouldn’t cover travellers, “for cancellation and other stuff, but for medical it would – as long as there is no travel advisory.

“Your medical plan still covers you when you travel. It doesn’t cover you for COVID-19. But if they got rid of the travel advisory to the safe countries, it would cover you for your regular medical. So those are some very important things.”.”

He also pointed out Canadians cannot renew their passports unless it’s urgent or for essential travel – not a situation he agrees with or is happy about.

Well, what about the distancing on planes?

“Maybe I’m not a paranoid person, but I tend to find that if you’ve got a mask on it should be okay.

“Look, when I flew in March, people had masks, they sanitized. I think if you’re sitting next to other passengers , or have an empty seat between you, I’d really like to see the seat in the center empty, I would. But we also know that consumers are not willing to pay 30% more for their airline ticket. So, it’s a catch-22, right.

“How are you going to do it if the consumers are not willing to pay more? Because who bears the brunt? Who bares the cost? The government then should come up and say, ‘Well, we’ll cover part of that cost,’ but they’re not going to do that.”

The airlines, he says, have received no money from the government other than the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS).

“That’s all they’ve gotten. The thing that I find interesting, people say they (the airlines) should do this, or they should do that. And the question is, who pays for it?

“I think that, at the end of the day, if consumers want to travel, it’s not a necessity, it’s a luxury. I’m a big believer in the consumer should pay for it, but they don’t want to pay for it, right. So, it’s a tough call.”

Would he fly now? Yes, he would. He would prefer if it was just he and his wife in the row, “No question. If it was just two people, three instead of two, I’d prefer that. But am I going on a plane? Yeah, I’m going on a plane.”

In fact, assuming everything is fine, the Friisdahls will be heading for Puerto Vallarta at the end of October.

Will COVID change travel?

Travel was riding so high, higher than it’s ever been. And suddenly we have this. So do we go back? Does holiday, vacation travel change? Do less people travel? Do less people go? Do they go to different places? Will it still be the DR, or Cuba, and Mexico?

People will travel because they just want to get away, says Friisdahl, noting that one sees people driving around Ontario just because they want to get out – to get away from the norm – from the every day.

“I believe strongly that we’ve always seen people go back to travel and they will go back again, because now people feel, ‘Okay. Now I can go to Jamaica for $1,000 and stay at a luxury hotel for a thousand bucks. Well, I can’t let that go by. I have to go. I’ll never get that again.’ Right? I’ve always found in my 25 years of doing this that people will travel when the price is at a level where they just can’t say no.” I would also say that Covid-19 is making people think twice about going, unlike before, however I still believe many will travel, as long as they feel it is safe.

People may not even have been thinking of travel he says, but then they hear some luxury resort in Cancun advertised on the radio for $1000 plus a $100 spa credit and that’s it – they’re ready to go.

“I do believe that you have started to see more people getting into smaller group travel.” Says Friisdahl.

“Like G Adventures, or Kensington, or Gateway and solo travelling was also starting to become very popular

“You know what’s interesting: one of my friends doesn’t travel, she’s not a key traveller. But, now that she’s not allowed to travel, she’s created a bigger bucket list than she ever had before, because she wants to go back to travelling. Now that she can’t, she’s like, ‘I want to have seen the pyramids before I die. I want to go and have seen the gorillas before I pass away. Now I want to do these things.’ When you tell people they can’t do them, they want to do it.

“I think that people still want to travel. I’m not worried about travel not coming back. I’m not worried if it comes back a little bit different, because that’ll mean that the less summer vacations we sell at eight percent commission. I’d much rather sell an adventure, or a river cruise or something like that, because we are making actually a living on those.

As for cruising, while some people were starting to look at big ships as a petri dish, which is completely unfair, says Friisdahl, yet on a positive note – one of the biggest areas that they have seen requests for is cruises.

“I think when you go on the big ships, one of the things that you notice is they have so many small areas.” Says Friisdahl.

This naturally makes social distancing easier. Cruise lines make a lot of money, so while they may have to raise some money in the short term, Friisdahl does not see that as a major issue. He believes very strongly that cruise lines will be back and equally very strongly that consumers will want to cruise. He thinks that realistically we should start to see something of a vaccine by January or February, and that by this time next year we’ll be back to a sense of normality.

Meanwhile things at the Travel Agent Next Door remain positive. “We’ve had talks with many, many storefront locations. We’ve had seven storefront locations join us over the last six to eight weeks.”

Agencies look at what they have to offer and they see a phenomenal opportunity of cutting costs, getting more product, getting more tools in their toolbox and spending significantly less money than they would have to do, says Friisdahl.

It’s not a one size fits all set up. The Travel Agent Next Door has agency owners in their late 50s or early 60s who want to reduce the amount of work they do. Others don’t want to give up control, or lose their brand, they want to run their own business – and here they can.

“They choose what suppliers to sell, we don’t tell them,” says Friisdahl, “and they completely their own brand, there’s nothing about The Travel Agent Next Door as part of their branding. They can even use their credit card with their own agency name on it to pay a supplier if need be.

For agency owners everything remains the way it except they don’t have to cover for example, in Ontario, the TICO engagement review. They don’t have to have their own errors and omissions. Annual PCI compliance courses are taken care of. They get their own website. Many agencies are using third party websites or paying $50 to $350 a month. Those costs disappear. Their marketing is all integrated. They get a phone system probably more advanced and certainly cheaper than their current one.

“Most of all, the agents I’ve talked to that joined us say that now they have more time, that they actually end up selling more travel. They’re making more money.” Says Friisdahl. “They’re doing what they came into the travel industry to do, SELL TRAVEL.”

He correctly points out that nobody wants to get into travel and tourism to do bank reconciliations, to do the various filings and the not inconsiderable paperwork involved in the selling of travel.

“They come in saying, ‘I want to go on familiarization trips. I want to learn about new destinations. I want to sell exciting trips. I want to deal with people who want to have fun on their vacation.’ That’s what you come into travel doing, right. So, I love what we’re doing because it’s really freeing people up to do what they do. It really gives them a different perspective.” Friisdahl also mentioned that Louise Gardiner has been an amazing ambassador for TAS (The Agency Solution) that was specifically created to talk to store front locations. With Louise’s many years of experience she lends great value and understanding when talking to store front owners”

And they must be doing something right, because people are still signing on – 43 since February. They lose people of course, there’s no question people have moved on says Friisdahl, “it’s part of what makes us stronger in what we do”.

The total number of agents they’re at right now is 867, which Friisdahl believes gives TTAND Canada’s largest number of home-based agents.

“We have some very, very good agents. We have some very, very good partners in them. And we have some amazing suppliers and amazing staff. If it wasn’t for those three groups of people, we wouldn’t be here. And we have some really cool programs for our agents. I didn’t realize the positive effect that some of these programs have had.

“We ran a program called The Isolation Game for eight weeks, where once a week, either you had to do something, dress up, or make something. And we did that for eight weeks beginning at the end of March.” The effective and the feedback from agents he says was amazingly positive.

“We’ve also had a guest speaker come in and do presentations about how to overcome grief. How to overcome the loss of some of the business or talk of the environment that we’re in today. Another presentation he did was specifically about how to motivate yourself and how to be positive and move through this.

“We don’t charge the agents for any of this. We bring in people to do these kinds of things because I believe strongly that we should be doing what a small agency can’t necessarily to do support themselves. In other words, we should be spending money helping our agents get through this. And we shouldn’t just say, “Oh, you’re doing okay. That’s great.”

Though they do that too. Every single one of the agents, gets a call every two months at minimum with just a ‘hey, how’s it going’ check. Every month during COVID that happens.

Friisdahl himself spends about 10 hours a month on calls to agents with in his network. “Every single agent with The Travel Agent Next Door will get two calls a year from me. That’s close to 1,000 phone calls a year I make just to see if our partners agents are doing okay.”

“At the end of the day, we didn’t start out to be Canada’s largest home-based agent,” says the founder and president, “That’s not what is important me. What’s important to me is what we do for those agents. And that’s what’s important to me.”