Upgrades to Gold Medal’s website include "gamechanging" curated offers and live chat; it has also increased contact centre capacity, and over the past yearm debuted new land, air and sea product.
Parent dnata Travel Group said its UK B2B brands would enter the peaks period "well and truly prepared to support agents" thanks to the efforts of its trade partnerships team over the past year.
This push has included in-person and virtual training through events, webinars, coffee mornings, extra educationals. Dnata added its trade partnership managers were standing by to deliver tailored support to help ease agents’ workload, both in person and remotely.
Gold Medal, Pure Luxury, Incredible Journeys and Cruise Plus will each launch new brand campaigns to agents in the new year, supported by five inspirational "books" and more than 200 offers.
During peaks 2024, Gold Medal’s contact centre took a record number of calls, including a 22% uptick in calls in January 2024 compared with January 2023. Managing director Applebaum believes these volumes could be exceeded in the coming weeks.
"Everything our brands have introduced across the past 12 months means we are set up better than ever before to support our agents through what we hope will be a bumper peaks 2025 and – ultimately – to help our agents secure bookings," he said.
"We have strengthened existing relationships with both our agent partners and supplier partners, as well as introducing new ones. We have further recruited into our contact centre and provided extensive training to give our agents the best possible experience when they ring our experts, and access to our breadth of product.
“We are excited by the enhancements to our web offering and we know from their feedback that agents are too. Curated offers was introduced so agents have access to more offers – including regional ones – plus increased marketing collateral for their windows and social pages. When they are receiving increased requests in the new year, this will be a gamechanger for them."
