Jet2holidays 'willing to innovate and take risks' to deliver public demand

Speaking to TTG at the tour operator’s 2018 conference launch last week, head of trade sales Alan Cross said everyone at Jet2holidays was revelling in its rapid expansion, with Turkey reclaiming its place as one of the operator’s most popular destinations.

“It’s fun, it’s fast-paced, it’s exciting,” he said. “It lets you be innovative and go with ideas. We talk about things for six minutes, not six months. We’d rather try something and fail than not try at all.

“Nobody said business can’t be fun. But we’re very focused on what we’re doing. We set out to build a conventional, good value, good service tour operator. And if people see that as taking over the world, perhaps that’s because others keep retracting, pulling back and not taking gambles.”

Jet2 will fly around 270 of its top-performing agents out to Antalya on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast over November 26-29 for its annual VIP conference, to be held at the Gloria Golf Resort in Belek - which Cross said “stood out by a mile” over other locations.

Speakers will include Jet2 chief executive Steve Heapy while the conference will come to a close with a gala dinner and awards ceremony recognising Jet2’s most successful agent partners.

“We don’t get an MC in, we do it all ourselves,” said Cross. “It will be professional, it will be educational - and everyone will walk away with at least one thing to help them be better travel agents and sales people.”

One thing that will be back for 2018 is “Jet2holidays Got Talent”, Cross revealed: “We put them [the agents] up on stage - agents love to see agents. It was better than any paid act we could have booked.”