This was the view of an expert industry panel speaking to TTG editor Sophie Griffiths at WTM London on Wednesday (3 November) during a session entitled: Who will be the winners in travel retail?

Jim Eastwood, Travel Counsellors’ global sales director, said travel was “imperfect by its very nature” with flight delays, natural disasters and now the impact of the pandemic making more consumers opt to book with agents and gain more personalised service.

“Travel can be fraught with unpredictability and that’s at the front of everyone’s mind at the moment,” he said. 

Eastwood said Travel Counsellors was seeing its numbers of new clients “increasing month by month” and said the homeworking giant wanted to tackle the “incorrect assumption” that agents’ advice was expensive.

Agreeing with Eastwood, Travel Network Group retail director Julie Pinkney described how the consortium’s members were seeing clients returning to book with them post-Covid after booking direct.

“There’s been a lot of confusion this year over traffic lights and entry requirements. Every customer has their own specific criteria and our trusted travel experts are helping them get that.”

Pinkney said retail travel agents were able to be "at the centre of their communities", recounting a recent story of an agent "bumping into" a client on their lunch break, "not talking about travel" and the following day securing a new booking with them.

Joining Eastwood and Pinkney on the panel was James South, founder and chief executive of digital marketing and virtual tours specialist, Gecko Digital.

During the pandemic, the firm launched new programme Igoroom - "the world’s first virtual reality online travel agency" - to allow travel sellers to offer their clients virtual reality presentations of hotels and destinations.

"We had to pivot... we thought, if you can’t bring people to the property, then let’s bring the property to the people," said South. "VR isn’t going to replace holidays but we want to change the booking process - we want to revolutionise it."

Both Eastwood and Pinkney extolled the benefits of their members using more social media and digital tools throughout the pandemic to market themselves and keep connected with customers. 

"If you can be flexible and incorporate all these traditional and new elements - offering an omnichannel approach - then you’ll be able to succeed," said Eastwood.