Face to Face: Peter Traynor, Collette
Contributors are not employed, compensated or governed by TD, opinions and statements are from the contributor directly
Can you tell us about the changes there has been to Collette recently?
It all started about 18 months ago when we started the partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), offering horticultural themed holidays for their members.
Then in November we signed up to hold the brand licence for Thomas Cook Tours covering the contracting and product side as well as sales. We are now classed as an in-house operator for them while Thomas Cook focuses on its core mainstream business.
Due to the need to service the Thomas Cook stores we had to move to a new office, where we have doubled the size and introduced more call centre staff to help with the volume. This means it is also open during the weekends to help the shop staff with enquiries.
As part of the three-brand approach we also restructured the management so we have a head of customer care Susan Byrne making sure the delivery is right, and a new head of marketing in Richard Adams who had previously worked for Fred. Olsen and Great Rail Journeys.
We also Collette (from Collette Worldwide Holidays) in January.
What has it been like to manage the Thomas Cook Tours business?
The operations move for Thomas Cook Tours has gone very well. We started selling the tours in November and operated them from March.
Since then the satisfaction rating has been around 97% or above and these are mainly on tours where the customers knew of the changes.
I’m optimistic on this arm for the rest of the year and been pleased with how it’s doing so far.
You also have a new brochure out earlier than before, why did you decide to change the strategy and has it been a success?
We’ve previously released a soft launch preview brochure in May but this year we decided to do a full launch in June instead of September.
Our long-haul holidays and the over-55s clientele tend to book early and customers were asking when they could book further ahead, so after seeing a healthy pre-registration we then rolled it out entirely.
It’s definitely had an impact so far and bookings are up compared to the last week, but we would need to see the results over a few weeks to see it’s full impact.
How have you been working with travel agents to boost business?
We’ve been holding more consumer events with travel agents in stores whether it’s a coffee morning or a wine tasting event in the evening.
It’s worthwhile to do those as the people attending are already interested and you can’t beat face to face interaction with between customers and our sales managers, who have all travelled extensively.
We’ve always liked working in partnerships and 90% of our sales are through the trade, but we’ve been most successful in targeting specific customers through sharing our data and profile information.
By sharing information with agents we are able to see which of their customers would be most interested in one of our tours and we can then send a joint branded mailing to them; it’s better to do this than blanket to everyone.
And how does all this affect Collette’s performance so far this year?
Sales for Collette have increased 26% in the last 2 months so our business is good and looking positive.
Our demographic of the over 55s is growing and people are living longer so it’s a buoyant sector to be in. They have time and money to go on long trips and we’ve got the destinations that are on their bucket list such as the US, New Zealand and Africa.
We’ll have another brochure launch in September and the only way is up for us for this year. The future’s bright and we will continue increasing sales; I’m not concerned about the future.
Comments are closed.