Luxury travel agencies are investing in emotional intelligence training to ensure staff are truly giving their customers what they want, this morning’s TTG Luxury Travel Summit in London has heard.

Speaking on a panel chaired by TTG Luxury editor April Hutchinson, both Jenny Graham, managing director of Quintessentially Travel and Simon Lynch, sales director of Scott Dunn, said they were taking steps to ensure their teams’ listening skills are among the best in the industry.

Graham said: “We’re investing in emotional intelligence training and ensuring we have the ability to ask the best questions of our customers – if we don’t do that we might not be able to understand exactly what our customer needs.”

The focus was very much on the ‘why’ a customer wants to take a trip, which only came from the sales team “being curious and asking the right questions of the customer”, added Graham.

Lynch said Scott Dunn was completely redesigning its sales process over the coming months, ahead of the January peaks.

“Emotional intelligence is right at the centre of that, and ensuring those sales skills are less about imparting the consultant’s own passion for the destination, more about listening to the customer,” he added

Speaking on the same panel, chaired by TTG Luxury editor April Hutchinson, Black Tomato founder Tom Marchant described travel as a “manifestation of our passions”.

“Fifty per cent of the people that get in touch with us don’t know where they want to go, but they know how they want to feel,” he said.