In an email sent to agents, seen by TTG, Jet2holidays said it was giving the trade “an easier, faster way to book and update your customers’ holidays online”. The tour operator said that from 9 April, agents “must self-serve” using the online Manage My Booking portal for a range of post-booking changes.
The amendments that must be self-served by agents starting next month include: online check-in and issuing boarding passes; adding holiday essentials; viewing and resending holiday documents; adding promo codes within 24 hours of booking; amending customers’ names and dates of birth; changing passengers; amending holiday dates or destination; changing flight times; upgrading room and board basis; special requests and holiday cancellations.
Jet2holidays said agents calling its call centre to make any of the above amendments from 9 April would be “directed to Manage My Booking”.
“This also allows us to maintain our award-winning service through our contact centre,” said Jet2holidays. “For any other queries that you are unable to self-serve on our website, please contact Pre-Travel Services.”
A Jet2holidays spokesperson told TTG: “In the spirit of our Partners2Success strategy, we are always looking at the best ways to make booking and managing holidays easier for our travel agent partners, while ensuring we deliver our award-winning service via our dedicated contact centre.
"These changes give agency partners an easier, faster way to book and update their customers’ holidays online.”
The changes were outlined late last year at the airline and operator’s annual conference. Speaking at the conference in late-November, Jet2’s director of digital James Malyon told delegates Jet2 had invested in adding more self-service capabilities to its trade portal following feedback from agents.
“You had to call us for every single change, every single amendment – when a customer came into the shop and wanted to change something, the only way to do that was to give us a call,” Malyon explained at the conference.
“So we’ve invested in ensuring we enable yourselves to be more efficient, so you can do those amendments and changes on your time, when it’s convenient for yourself, rather than having to wait and call us at a time that’s convenient."
Jet2holidays has also launched self-service assisted travel functionality for agents through Manage My Booking. "All of these different features have been targeted at enabling you guys to serve your customers your way at the most efficient times for yourself,” Malyon continued.
Jet2 plans to introduce the “full self-service suite of capability” to the platform by the end of this year, with the aim that agents will not have to call the operator for any amendments.
“Every single amendment journey will be live for self-service capability,” said Malyon during the conference. “That doesn’t mean to say that we won’t be there if you need us and we won’t be enabling you to call, should that be your preferred channel or you’ve got more questions that you want to ask us.”
The operator is also planning a “full rebuild” of its trade website, which Malyon said would address “frustration points over the next couple of years”.
“It obviously is a full website rebuild, so it will take time, but things like that we can absolutely build into the requirements to make sure we’re delivering the optimised experience,” he added.
Jet2holidays has already rolled out a new “conversational” AI-powered search tool to agents, which was also revealed at November’s conference.
