What a day, spent the afternoon clearing the brochure room again, 15 full bags to the recycle bin, what a complete waste of paper, time and effort.
When will operators allow us to order what we want, and the delivery co's only deliver what we want. ! Its drives me nuts to see this waste and must cost the tour ops £1,000's in wasted brochures and distribution costs. They and the distribution company's should clearly come up with a more environmentally friendly way of distribution.!!
Well thats my rant over for the day !
Nick
We started to proactively manage our brochures 3 years ago. Now our waste has been reduced by 75% or more.
How to do this: Note what you are getting too many off and inform the Operator ask to be down graded.
You are supposed to do this anyway, but as any Tour Op will tell you there are a handful of agents that do this.
Hi Nick
We already done this so many times, ! Its when we ask say for a supply of Club Med brochures, which we do sell a lot of, they come bundled with a lot of stuff that we do not sell and haven't even asked for. ! Its especially worse at the end of the season. !! We've asked all our operators to provide us with electronic brochures to cut out all this waste. !! There is no need for brochures any more - they are a complete waste to the environment. The travel industry to catch up with time and cut brochures all together. !
Hi Nick, we have the same problem, we order a particular companies brochures that we actually need and it comes packed with all this useless stuff that we never sell and we cant even reject the delivery because we need some of it. We have to get a skip ordered every month to get rid of all the junk.
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How you get brochures is 2 ways
Brochure management companies do not just send brochures. If you’re getting too many keep plugging away at the tour operator. You can also ask to remove from auto drops. (most tour ops can not do this.)
As I said before it took us 2 years, so keep working at it.
The main reason both systems came about is because most agents where to lazy to manage there own orders. I not sure how many agents have active stock management programs now, but a few years ago it was less than 100 out of over 7000.
Believe me we keep trying. ! However what we have done this week it to write to write to certain companys to advise that we do not require there brochures and regretfully if they keep sending them we will have to charge them for disposal ! It's worse than junk mail. ! - That should stop them.
From a Tour Operator stance - you might welcome the fact that we only send brochures out when requested. Unfortunately there is a certain reluctance(or laziness) to order them and depsite our product being very popular in the trade,we are always getting complaints of "no brochures". Catch 22
Sorry but if I were a brochure publisher, which I am not, would have to disagree with you.
Additionally, well planned, well designed informative brochures do really help many of our clients decide on a hotel and/or destination and the reality is the help us tremendously with the final sell. Having said that we loathe and hate the time-wasters who come in just to pick up brochures, sometimes for a holiday they have already booked online, or just beacuse we know they will go to waste in their hands.
We don't mind printing out the odd page or two of online electronic brochures, but any more than that and printing and paper costs, per page, become the same as that of a full brochure.