John Warr, managing director of The Travel Village Group, told TTG the group had to up its game on touring and adventure, and that he believed the business was currently missing out on sales.
Warr said the group would be "proactive" in its approach, recognising it had a number of cruise clients in its database who were of the touring age demographic but were not touring with The Travel Village Group.
“We’re missing out on that market space,” he said, explaining the group needed to help its agents become more confident selling touring and adventure.
"We will do some focused touring training," said Warr. "We’re not going to wait until our conference next year to do it. We’ll work with touring specialists, and we’ve got staff members within the business who do a number of escorted tours."
Warr flagged agent Wendy Haines as an example. "I’ve sent several large groups out this year already on escorted tours for my own [Travel Village Group] business,” she told TTG.
Haines said she spoke to several Travel Village Group agents at the group’s conference over 27-30 May about selling the product. “There’s definitely potential there for the touring experts at the Travel Village Group to be involved in this push and to help sales," she said.
Warr said the group’s plans to strengthen its focus on touring will not only be internal, but external too. "We will want to work with Wendy Wu Tours, we want to work with Titan [Travel], we want to work with all these guys who do escorted touring, there’s some tremendous product.
“We started organising some specialist groups, helping homeworkers put groups together for 2023 to 2024. We’ve got some people who do escorted tours within the business, there’s a good pool of resources to pull from."
Warr added the group wouldn’t target a specific destination. "Asia is still opening up, Japan will be open in a couple of months – we will have a broad proposition," he said.
