It is a breezy autumnal morning in the capital of Slovenia. Gold and rusty-leafed trees line the cobbled streets, contrasting the deep green of the mountains which surround Ljubljana.
Outside the pavements are still damp from last night’s storms, but Gary Lewis and I are inside, sitting in the Hotel Slon, enjoying a Slovenian breakfast of pancakes and sausages.
It seems a fitting location to interview the group managing director of The Travel Network Group (TTNG) - 16 months ago, his consortium also held its conference in Slovenia, on the banks of the breathtaking Lake Bled. This year, we are here for the annual Abta Travel Convention, but Lewis is clearly enjoying his return to the country.
“I felt flattered that Abta came to Slovenia for its convention,” he admits. “I’ve already been back to Lake Bled, and walked around the lake, and done the toboggan run. I still think it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to.”
Last May, delegates at TTNG’s conference spoke of how they had been taken aback by the beauty of the relatively little-known Balkan country. Listening to the conversations in the bars this year, it seems the Travel Convention delegates feel much the same. Lewis reveals that TTNG, which has around 800 members, saw an upturn in sales to the region off the back of its Lake Bled
conference - proof that hosting a travel convention really can offer a notable boost to tourism. Which is why Croatia, and more importantly Split, will be eagerly looking forward to hosting the conference of the UK’s largest consortium this weekend.
Location, location
As with Lake Bled, the location for the 2014 event raised eyebrows for many members, but Lewis says choosing somewhere off the typical conference map is part of the consortium’s strategy. “We’ve said we wanted to be considered different to our competitors in the market place - we think differently and we behave differently, and we wanted to reflect that with our conference destination.
“We wanted to go somewhere that 95% of members haven’t been before - given that we’re in the travel industry, that’s not an easy thing to do,” Lewis acknowledges with a grin.
“But the Slovenian tourist board put us in touch with Croatia, who saw the success of what happened following the Bled conference, and they gave us a unique offering. We didn’t want to do Dubrovnik because lots of people have been there.”
This desire to be “different” forms the basis of Lewis’ strategy for the consortium, as it seeks to provide an alternative offering to its competitors. “We’ve had some big structural changes over the past few years, and we’re saying we want to behave differently at the centre to provide help and support for our members.”
As a result, the consortium has recently introduced several initiatives, including a new marketing team introduced last May; a new membership services director; and key account managers - each one allocated members with whom they can develop personal relationships, rather than members having to deal with different account managers each time.
“We want to re-establish relationships between members and account managers,” Lewis explains. “We wrote to members three weeks ago letting them know who their account managers were going to be. They will be responsible for making sure that they understand the technology and support that is there for the member’s business.”
Member focus
This focus on detail will form the basis of the consortium’s conference this weekend, which has been given the unusual theme of “obsession”.
Announcing the conference in April, Lewis said the theme was chosen because it not only “underpinned values of being entrepreneurial, target-driven and passionate” - but also it described the consortium’s “ruthlessness” in pursuing its growth strategy.
Lewis added that the theme was also designed to push members to think more healthily about the “here and now rather than the future”.
“Over the past three, four years of the industry, people have been talking about the recession and the challenges of the future,” he explains. “It’s not about the future, it’s about what you should get access to now as a member of TTNG.”
Another element the consortium has been “obsessing” about is a change in strategy, which has seen it focusing less on growing membership numbers, and more on the growth of members’ businesses. “We’re putting a huge emphasis on growth - historically we worked around growing membership as an organisation, but we didn’t focus on growing individual businesses and members’ day-to-day needs,” Lewis says.
Keen to boost the consortium’s bond with its members, Lewis says TTNG has spent the past three months out on the road meeting face-to-face with members.
“Over the course of July, August and September we will have personally visited more than 110 members. We’re going to members and saying: ‘this is what we are doing for others. You know your business - is there something within our portfolio proposition that you don’t know about?’”
And how has this been received? Very well, according to Lewis, or to be more accurate, “almost evangelically”.
“The members think what we’re doing is fantastic. They’re talking almost evangelically about the energy and new ideas.” These new ideas comprise “simple things”, Lewis says, such as “advertising coupons, leads from the consortium’s Worldchoice TV proposition, and event management and practical advice to help companies engage with other local businesses or run their own events”.
But if the consortium is more focused on growing members’ individual business, is it less concerned about expanding its own numbers? “Obviously we still want to grow TTNG business too,” Lewis concedes. “But we’re focusing on the existing members.”
He remains tight-lipped on whether growing the consortium’s business might include approaching Global Travel Group’s members now the consortium looks set to be purchased by dnata, stating only: “We can’t comment while dnata is going through its competition process [to acquire the Stella Group].
On dnata itself and its flurry of acquisitions though, Lewis is excited, arguing that the fact it now owns Travel 2 and Gold Medal will mean agents will have access “to some fantastic content - airline and accommodation contracts”.
“It’s really good for the UK travel market because they are buying companies that they want to build on - they have a solid, long-term strategy”.
Change is clearly coming to the travel consortia market, but with Lewis’s desire - and “obsession” - to be different, it seems TTNG looks well-positioned to thrive in the new landscape.
