1. Tailor-making through TC Journeys
Travel Counsellors is fast becoming a significant tour operator in its own right: it increased its Atol license by almost a third this year, from 106,730 passengers in October 2022 to 140,830 in October 2023, making it the 18th-largest Atol holder.
Agents have been strongly encouraged to self-package simple bookings on Travel Counsellors’ proprietary Phenix platform for several years, but Phenix’s capabilities will expand significantly next month with the launch of ‘TC Journeys’, for tailor-making multicentre itineraries.
TCs will be able to share successful itineraries that they have created with the wider TC community, enabling agents to drag-and-drop itineraries and check live availability and live pricing in seconds.
Travel Counsellors has been steadily building up the number of destination management companies it works with, welcoming 8 more this year to total 50. Head office also hopes to grow direct contracts with hotels from its current 250 to 1,500 by the end of next year.
Managing director and chief commercial officer Kirsten Hughes told TTG the initial focus with TC Journeys will be on top-selling tailor-made destinations such as Asia, Australia and the US, including self-drive itineraries.
This will likely see less reliance on certain tour operator partners, but Hughes insisted specialist operators, and touring and adventure partners in particular, will remain critical to the business.
“This isn’t about cutting out the specialists like Intrepid and G Adventures,” she said. “We’ve grown our touring and adventure business significantly and it’s an integral part of what we do.”
A number of pre-loaded itineraries will go live by the end of December.
2. Massive investment in technology
A record £15 million will be invested in Travel Counsellors’ technology platforms next year (up from £10 million in 2023), to free up TCs’ time to focus on building relationships and enable them to earn higher margin.
Chief technology officer Jon Bauer said the last 12 months had seen 90,000 development hours go into building 2,500 new features on Phenix, including auto-population of data fields, 500,000 added hotels, and a facility for customers to donate directly to Travel Counsellors’ chosen charity, Reubens Retreat.
Coming soon will be a local-search functionality akin to Googlemaps, whereby TCs will be able to drop a pin on a map and see all the bookable products in that area, and a new platform that will pull email, Whatsapp and video-call communications into one channel (replacing Skype), to be rolled out later next year.
A new global payments system, which has taken almost two years to get right, is being trialled next week, including Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Bauer told TTG the company is really only halfway through a four or five-year technological transformation that must bring together 37 different platforms into the Phenix system.
“Phenix deals with 4-5 million data points each day - it’s incredibly large and complex and we still have lots of ‘sharp edges’ to fix. But if we can fix those, saving our TCs a few seconds here and a few seconds there, as well as building lots of new capability, then that’s the win,” he explained.
3. Collaborating with content creators
A new marketing initiative will see head office partner with social media influencers to grow awareness of the brand and drive demand.
Customer director and chief marketing officer Dave Callan told TTG the brand’s social footprint had increased by more than 180% in the last year, with engagement at brand-level up by 98%, giving Travel Counsellors a powerful platform from which to “take the brand to the next level”.
“We are now very intentional in how we use social media and how we leverage the power of brand and our TC community in this space. We know that social platforms are now search engines for inspiration and that premium leisure customers are looking for authentic and trustworthy content to help with their purchase decisions.”
TCs will also be encouraged to nominate their own customers to take part in the initiative.
“It’s about how we can get your customers to advocate for the brand,” Callan told delegates at the conference. “If you have customers with a significant following, we can support you in making it work.”
‘Pods’ of TCs will also be created to handle the enquiries generated by the campaign. The pilot series is expected to launch in February or March.
4. Piloting AI technology
The group is to trial AI technology that will automate certain daily tasks, such as alerting TCs when a client’s typical booking period is approaching, and suggesting suitable products for the client based on their previous bookings and on hotel review content, which can be dropped into quotes with one click.
By responding to its suggestions, TCs will be able to help the tool learn and improve its accuracy and relevance.
Bauer told TTG that AI “definitely cannot replace what our Travel Counsellors do”.
“If you’re high volume like On The Beach or Loveholidays, then yes, you can be replaced by Google. But for us it’s more about giving our TCs more time to focus on relationships, and enabling new joiners to get up to speed more quickly,” he insisted.
The digital assistant, to be named ‘TC Co-Pilot’, will be trialled from next spring.
5. Leaning into corporate travel
Corporate travel turnover grew by 24% to £209 million this year, exceeding the £200 million mark for the first time. The organisation has welcomed 23 new corporate-focussed TCs this year, and seen 862 new client accounts opened across the business.
But Kieran Hartwell, managing director corporate at Travel Counsellors, said this represents only 4% of the corporate SME sector’s travel spend in the UK. “There is vast headroom to grow,” he urged.
Developments in the pipeline include enhanced new distribution capability (NDC), wider access to corporate hotel content, and - crucially, to enable scalability - an online booking tool.
More than half of the TC community are now using ‘TC Teams’ functionality to work together to service clients. This has been particularly successful in corporate travel, where some agents now work solely on winning new business that they pass on to colleagues, or work solely on administration and support, while still sharing in the profit.
Corporate TCs Chris D’Arcy and Gary Fitzgibbon, named "Top Performing TC Global” at the conference, worked together to generate sales and associated sales of more than £10 million in the last year - making them the first TC in history to bust sales of seven figures.
Hartwell said there will be a renewed focus in 2024 on encouraging leisure TCs to ask their client base if they also travel for work, and pass leads over to a corporate TC if they prefer not to book it themselves.
TCs who do pass over a corporate lead take 10% of the profits in the first year of the client booking, which has seen at least one leisure TC earn "Gold Travel Counsellor" status this year as a result.
