Personal Travel Agents emphasise local credentials

The Project Local initiative will deliver agents a marketing tool kit and business coaching to deliver a two-week “blitz” of awareness in their local area.

Sheena Whittle, head of The Personal Travel Agents, said: “This is driven by the move to shop locally across all markets.” She said the aim was for consumers to recognise they had a local PTA. 

“We’ve seen some really good results with a pilot of three agents who all increased sales and followers on social media.”

Following the trial, the initiative was launched at the PTA’s tenth annual conference in Malta under the supervision of Donna Brady, agent support manager. It is designed to strengthen the wider Your Co-op group’s core values of serving communities in which they operate.

Brady added: “Despite the pilot taking place while the UK was in a period of mourning after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the three agents participating in the trial saw combined incremental earnings of £2,633 from 15 new bookings over the trial period, in addition to the total number of social media followers between the three PTAs increasing by 295, 92 new sign ups to the PTAs databases and 28 still ongoing new enquiries.” 

Also revealed in Malta was a new agents’ dashboard, which Whittle said would enable homeworkers to understand some of the trends within their business via data collated from each agent, including sources of bookings, destinations and operators. A commission builder function will be added, enabling agents to keep track on their annual commission levels.  

Other new initiatives include an automated administration system, which will go live in early November.

The Malta conference also saw the PTA’s annual awards, with The PTAs’ Homeworker of the Homeworkers award going to Suzanne Wren for the nineth time in 10 years for her support and guidance of other agents.