Speaking during TTG’s Agenda 2022 seminar on Thursday (28 July), Gold Medal managing director Simon Applebaum said staff shortages are not the only reason trade service levels are not back to pre-pandemic levels.

"At Gold Medal we have a critical mass of people," he added. "For example, if you need 200 people in a department to service demand, but only had 100, you just can’t cope. But we are now at around 150-160, so we’re not smashing it, but we are coping.

"We are seeing a lot of improvement in our ability to answer calls from our agent partners, but we then have to deal with the issue on the end of the phone call, which is where experience comes in. And we can’t just magic that up, during the pandemic we lost a tonne of experience."

Applebaum was joined on the panel by TTG Media chief executive Daniel Pearce, Designer Travel managing director Amanda Matthews and ITT director of education Claire Steiner.

Steiner said she doesn’t believe "100%" of former travel staff who left their jobs during the pandemic will return to the sector, but "eight of ten" might.

"This industry still remains an attractive one for younger people, but the problem we have at the moment is attracting those people with experience, because they don’t want to come back right now because of the state of the industry," she added.

"There are people out there who want to come back, but what we are seeing at the moment in the industry, with the delays, is putting them off."

Meanwhile, Matthews said the agency "hasn’t seen a marked improvement" in supplier call wait times, despite Applebaum claiming Gold Medal’s average call wait times of 45-50 minutes in March has reduced to 10-12 minutes this month.

"I think some of that is down to the volumes of passengers we have travelling," Matthews continued. "We’ve kept proactive and booking throughout the pandemic so we have huge volumes of business going out. Some operators are better than others, some have extended hours which has been a great help."

Matthews further urged the industry to be "open and honest" with each other. "This isn’t a case of agents blaming suppliers or vice versa, we’re in this together and if we can work closer together we will be able to find solutions to help everyone out."