Cosmos and Avalon Waterways’ Giles Hawke says partnerships are core to the industry’s success
I have talked about partnership regularly on panels and in columns over the years. It is core to how the travel industry works and how we can all be successful.
When companies work in true partnership with each other there is honesty, transparency and integrity from both sides, with a view to both parties achieving a win that everyone is happy with.
The work done by the likes of Clia and Atas is a real extension of this partnership. As operators and cruise lines, we invest in these organisations to further our common causes and deepen the partnership between us and our travel agent partners.
We also invest significant sums of money in our sales teams, our contact centres and our technology to ensure that we deliver the right level of training, support, creativity and sales opportunities for our partners to enable them to better sell our products and to make money from the commissions and overrides that we all offer.
The other key part of our side of the bargain is that we need to deliver amazing holiday experiences and look after our mutual customers while they are on their holidays. In return, we normally receive marketing support and activity and sales volumes as well as strong long-term relationships with some amazing and passionate people.
Merited support
‘So what’s the point you’re making here, Giles?’ I hear you ask. Good question! As we bounce back from the last few years, we are all acutely aware of the financial pressures on every business in the travel sector. Most businesses took on debt and investment to keep themselves going during the very lean period and we all need to repay that debt as trading begins to pick up. Many operators did everything possible to support partners during the difficult times since March 2020, but a large number didn’t.
“We don’t all have the megabucks for big‑money activity but this doesn’t mean we don’t value working with you”
It’s a massive frustration for those operators and cruise lines who did the right thing, at a time when all businesses were struggling, to see that businesses which may not have been wholly supportive or behaved correctly with their partners and customers are allowed back in the door with some agencies and able to act as if nothing really happened. It appears in some cases that doing the right thing and being a good partner, even when times are bad, isn’t as valued as one might hope. We didn’t do the right thing in the hope that it would later be repaid, but because that is the nature of those businesses which acted in good faith and looked after their partners. That said, it would be nice to see the good guys win through in this new environment!
Amazing partners
We have a large number of amazing partners in this industry whom we love working with. We, and many similar businesses, aren’t of the scale of some of the massive operators, who may have very deep pockets and be happy and able to pay five‑figure sums (or more!) for joint marketing activity or to attend conferences.
That doesn’t mean we can’t jointly find ways to attract customers together that are innovative and low-cost. It also doesn’t mean we don’t want to support strong partners. It just means that our scale and size, linked to the fact that we are all recovering from a financially challenging three-year period, doesn’t allow us to spend fortunes on activity which we would dearly love to be part of but which is hard to fund without the sales required to cover the costs.
So my plea to travel partners is this: please consider all the great things many operators do to support you and help you make money, and recognise that we don’t all have the megabucks to commit to big-money activity. This doesn’t mean we don’t love working with you or that we don’t value our partnerships and your business, it just means that everything we do together has to deliver a great ROI.
Think about your really good partners – those that look after you, train you, help you out, pay you good commission and are there for you in good times and bad – and let’s see if we can jointly smash sales for the remainder of this year and as we start to drive early volumes for 2024 together.