Travelmaker, Channel Islands Co-operative

Travelmaker, Channel Islands Co-operative
One of TTG’s Top 50 Travel Agencies 2020

Since boss Miles first identified the potential of touring and adventure holidays for his customers four years ago, this style of travel has become the fastest-growing area of the business.

Miles Morgan Travel (MMT) comprises 17 stores in the south west and Wales, with a team of 80 consultants, and every single consultant has undertaken training so they can talk passionately and knowledgeably about touring holidays.

Staff members are encouraged to organise and escort their own group trips for their local customers, working with a tour operator partner; these trips often sell out within hours or days of going on sale.

It’s the sales consultants who star in MMT’s Travel Talk customer magazine too – writing first-hand reports from educational trips they’ve been on to demonstrate their expertise. Clients should not only expect strong product knowledge from MMT, but extraordinary customer service too: the agency has an exceptional rating of 4.9/5 across 10,000 customer reviews on review platform Feefo. It also undertakes a major client survey every year to find out how it could be serving clients needs and communicating with them better.

MMT branches strive to support their local communities, whether sponsoring local sports teams and music festivals, running Macmillan Coffee Mornings in-store or working with Rotary clubs. Miles himself climbed Africa’s Kilimanjaro last year, raising £3,000 for charity. And the company is keenly aware of environmental issues too, now sending out its customer magazine in compostable wrappers, and introducing paper wallets instead of plastic for foreign exchange.

MMT held its first dedicated escorted touring show in 2019, with 19 suppliers exhibiting at an event in Cheltenham. Last year also heralded a bigger focus on the solos market, with new ‘Solo Traveller Specialist’ branding launched in September, and solos-specific emails now achieving the highest open rates of all.

Smart marketing such as this helped touring and adventure grow by a remarkable 122% year-on-year for MMT in 2019.

This group of four branches – part of the Channel Islands Co-operative – has seen touring holidays grow steadily over the last five years, and this style of travel now accounts for almost 30% of sales.

The past year has seen the team of 19 consultants travel as far afield as Mexico, Borneo, South Africa, Western Australia, India and California, and staff write about their trips for a local newspaper, which often drums up considerable interest.

Highly personalised service – which might include hand-delivering tickets for elderly clients and printing special versions of an itinerary for a client with learning difficulties – help explain Travelmaker’s enviable 80% repeat client rate.

The team uses close relationships with tour operator partners to try to secure free or discounted flights from the Channel Islands to the mainland to connect with group departures, and often pays for airport transfers and airport lounge access for clients out of the agency’s own pocket.

The agency has worked hard to find new touring clients in the past year, working with local cycling and running clubs to promote adventure holidays to their members. Touring partners have also hosted intimate in-store events across the group, as well as attending Travelmaker’s major annual travel show.

There’s been a bigger focus on sustainability too, after a customer survey showed 40% of clients are concerned about responsible travel. As a result, Travelmaker no longer sends out print leaflets, has banned single-use plastic water bottles from its branches and has stopped giving out foreign exchange in plastic wallets. You’re also likely to see Travelmaker consultants out and about doing beach-cleans and planting trees, or delivering Christmas presents to the elderly and sick as just one of many charitable endeavours.

This travel agency is also clearly as focussed on looking after its employees as it is its customers and local community: various new employee welfare initiatives over the past year helped the travel division be named top out of 20 departments in the society for colleague satisfaction.

channelislands.coop/je/travel