Travel Counsellors take control with tech

Taking control of the way agents run their business was top priority at Travel Counsellors’ annual conference last week.

While personal service was a key foundation for business, Travel Counsellor agents were largely pushed in the direction of the company’s in-house technology, the secret weapon in boosting earning potential.

“The plan for Travel Counsellors is to place big investments in technology, make technical jobs and give better service to all,” Travel Counsellors’ founder and Chairman David Speakman told Travel Weekly.

“Online travel agencies will continue to ramp up investment in technology to personalise their service, and will use technology to retain customers.”

“The only difference is in the quality of the agent and your track record, that’s what’s going to count. We think we’re different in that sense, and have a proven model based on relationships.”

“[The technology] ensures that our agents can act as wholesalers to give them the margins they deserve.”

As a result, the star of the show was always going to be the dynamic packaging system known as Phenix, which was touted as the integrated ‘shopping basket’ quote system.

Its secret powers include enabling agents to track all enquiries, build complex itineraries and create and track quotes using the company’s newly redesigned documentation.

Commercial director Kirsten Hughes demonstrated how agents can still sell the best products and prices, while taking their earning potential to new heights, using an example of a recent Travel Counsellor who, using Phenix, made the same amount of money in three months than they did in the entire previous year.

“Phenix makes you more efficient and makes you more money by giving you the ability to be a true wholesaler, enabling you to take control of what and how you sell, and grow your businesses in an ever competitive commercial market,” she explained.

“It’s your system and no other company anywhere is investing the amount of money or resources into a comparable system than we do with Phenix.”

Speaking at the conference, Hughes reminded agents to take advantage of the existing support systems to grow a better business.

“The traditional way of running a travel business with a high number of sales at a low margin ultimately creates busy, stressed and unsatisfied agents. That is not what we are about,” Hughes told delegates. “As a Travel Counsellor your focus needs to be on building relationships with your customers, and ultimately creating customers for life.”

“You are not the internet and any client that is using your service doesn’t want to research and book their travel for themselves.”

With over 1350 professional Travel Counsellors across eight countries, Travel Counsellors has seen annual revenue growth in 2014 of $80m, taking global turnover to $850m, with average income per agent increasing by 15% in the past 12 months.

With technology investments of $2m a year focused solely on the needs of the home based agent, Travel Counsellors are now seeing record levels of margin and earnings growth as its agents create their own tailor-made holidays through Phenix.

“We are focused and passionate about building our trusted travel brand in the Australian marketplace and investing further across the business,” MD Steve Byrne told agents at the conference.

“This includes recent investments in your support team in Australia, alongside more online and face-to-face training programmes and a continued focus on developing the in-house dynamic packaging technology that sets you apart from anyone else.”

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david speakman kirsten hughes phenix travel counsellors