Sheena Whittle, head of The Personal Travel Agents At Co-Operative Travel, told homeworkers that sales via social media has grown by 17% year on year.
She was speaking to agents during the company's seventh annual conference in Cyprus held on March 27-30. More than 100 of The Personal Travel Agents at Co-operative Travel gathered for the programme where the achievements of the past year were celebrated and a series of new initiatives were announced, designed to help the homeworkers future-proof their businesses.
The conference, themed ?Destination Future?, was held at Constantinou Bros Asimina Suites Hotel, in Paphos. Constantinou Bros Hotels was the host sponsor for the conference, alongside Jet2Holidays.
Whittle took to the stage to provide a business update to homeworkers and to announce the new initiatives, which include a new system to develop more comprehensive and glossy customer quotes; the introduction of Hootsuite to offer agents the option to have some of their brand building social media content created and managed on their behalf; and plans to develop the PTAs? expertise in three key product areas - ski, luxury and cruise.
During her business update, Whittle said: ?Repeat customers remain the number one sales generator, up 7%, year on year, closely followed by referrals, which is up 6% year on year. We?re pleased to say that sales via social media continue to grow, up 17% year on year. In 2018-19 social media generated massive 2,392 bookings and ?4.6million in sales. Compare that to two years ago, when that figure was ?2million in sales, and you can see how far we?ve come. Two stand-out examples of sales generated from the centrally-created social media calendar in the last month include a ?12,000 group booking and a ?9,000 city break booking.
?In January 2019, we hit ?50million sales, a huge milestone for The Personal Travel Agents at Co-operative Travel in our seven-year history.?
Kiri Dulay, marketing and social media manager for the company unveiled a range of new marketing collateral that homeworkers will have access to from April 24, including a range of ?just to say? postcards to send to clients at various stages throughout the booking journey - themed to family, ski, cruise, luxury and generic travel; and new referrals postcard. A selection of new social media assets has also been developed, ready for homeworkers to personalise and begin using from April 24.
Whittle also revealed plans to drive the partnership with The Travel Foundation further to build upon the ?8,600 that was raised in 2018 from customer donations when booking holidays with The Personal Travel Agents at Co-operative Travel.
The three-day conference also featured dedicated workshops, one-to-one appointments with individual suppliers and a trade fair-style open forum where the homeworkers had the opportunity to catch-up with any additional suppliers.
Visit www.thepersonaltravelagents.co.uk or www.jointhepersonaltravelagents.co.uk to find out more.
