TTG Awards: Tips for agencies to reach the top

At this year’s TTG Travel Awards we will for the first time be focusing solely on the individual travel agents – as opposed to companies – who have had a winning performance in the past 12 months.

There are eight categories for agents to enter, and agents can either nominate themselves or a colleague. For each of the categories, agents (or their managers/nominators) just need to answer two questions.

Question one focuses on customer service, and asks agents to give specific examples of having gone above and beyond the call of duty for a customer in the past 12 months. Awards hopefuls should also give detail of feedback from customers, and demonstrate how they have improved their product knowledge to ensure they give their customers the best possible advice.

Judges are always impressed by specifics, so give numbers wherever you can: how many fam trips have you been on? How many online training courses have you taken? How many “thank you” letters have you had from customers?

Question two focuses on sales, and requires contenders to give detail on targets and results. They should also describe the marketing initiatives they have employed in the past 12 months and with what return on investment, and demonstrate an innovative approach to winning new business. Again, give as much detail as possible: how many new customers did you gain through a competition? What level of sales can you attribute to your client event?

There is a maximum word count of 400 words for each question, so it is advised to begin your submission in a Word document and edit your answers down to the right length. You don’t have to write as many as 400 words, but if you’ve written less than 200 words for either question you may not have given enough evidence and detail to convince our judges.

There is a facility for you to upload PDFs and other supporting material, but it’s best to include all relevant information in the questions themselves. Judges will be reading up to eight submissions in every category so make the information you give is as easy to digest as possible; using bullet points is fine.

All agent categories are free to enter, and you can edit your submission online right up until the deadline of June 8. Once the entry deadline has passed, the submissions will be assessed by a team of TTG journalists and shortlists will be drawn up in every category. Panels of industry experts will then meet to decide the winner from the shortlisted submissions.

• For more tips on writing an award-winning entry, see the entry forms at ttgtravelawards.com