Travel Weekly Blog

This post comes from regular contributor Brian Hordon (Silversea Cruises UK)

Visit Britain plans to spend one million pounds promoting English rural tourism to the UK holiday market, and already television and newspaper adverts are appearing.

It is a campaign that will create new opportunities for creative travel agents, and represent a new challenge for many other agents.

I would suggest that in most travel agencies knowledge of overseas destinations, resorts and hotels far outweighs the equivalent knowledge of the United Kingdom; no doubt someone will take me to task on this, but the response will be interesting.

So the challenge is twofold. First, the travel agent needs to recognise a niche sales opportunity and ensure that appropriate operator and product knowledge and customer awareness of the United Kingdom as a viable sales alternative (or even a first choice) is included in business plan activity.

Second - and most thought provoking - the myriad of United Kingdom products need to move up a couple of gears to ensure that the features and benefits of their products become front of mind at the cutting edge of the retail travel agent market.

Just look at the demographics of the United Kingdom population, wealth control etc; many holidaymakers seek safety and security, ease of travel and good value - all widely available within the UK holiday "basket."

But those same holidaymakers are probably booking direct right now due to lack of awareness of how a good travel agent can help them.

Believe me, this can be reversed, so please recognise this superb opportunity and go for it. It can also make you money!

One million may not seem like a lot. But if it succeeds (and there is no reason why this highly creative campaign should not) I am sure more money will become available for promotional activity, so the need to be in place is paramount.

Brian Hordon, Director of Training Development, Silversea Cruises (UK)Ltd