It is essential for the travel industry as a whole to get the right staff back in the business quickly to cope with the travel needs of customers.
This is the belief of Bonnie Smith, GM of the FCTG Corporate Brands in SA (Corporate Traveller and FCM Travel), who adds that travel recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic has been hammering company size. “It has been difficult to right-size as fast as the recovery.”
Holiday Travel Group GM, Deolinda Da Silva, agrees that there is a resource issue in many businesses due to the pandemic and travel restrictions. “It is a Catch-22 scenario because resource cannot be adequately employed without revenue and revenue cannot be protected without resource, but service cannot be compromised.”
Da Silva encourages the industry to bring back the passion for travel. “We believe that sound product and systems training, team accountability and good, old-fashioned hard work needs to be a priority in all businesses at the moment to ensure efficiency and, most importantly, long-term sustainability, which will help guarantee client retention.”
Merrill Isherwood, business travel adviser and founder of Merrill’s Travel Company, says the industry and all travel personnel have been through a tough time since the pandemic began and are still reeling from the devastation of job losses, salary cuts and possibly even the deaths of colleagues, friends and family.
“It’s understandable that many people are still trying to recover emotionally or even physically, however it must be remembered that travellers are dependent on service providers to deliver on their service mandates to ensure travellers’ trips proceed without incident.”
Travellers should not have to expect anything less than excellent customer service, she believes, which means they need travel professionals now more than ever. “Unfortunately, in my personal experience with recent international travel, there are levels of complacency and disregard for travellers that have no place in the service industry today,” she says.
“Conflicting information is available on websites and without the clear guidance from trusted sources, (i.e. travel buyers, TMCs, and/or their partners), corporate travellers are at risk of non-compliance, which could have serious consequences, especially financial,” Isherwood adds. “Having direct access to these trusted sources in an emergency is key and can greatly reduce the traveller’s stress.”
Kananelo Makhetha, CEO of Club Travel Corporate, agrees that traditional sources of consultants’ information are no longer adequate in a rapidly changing and dynamic post-COVID travel environment. “TMCs are therefore increasingly investing in getting reliable information from multiple sources and making it easily and readily available to consultants and clients.”
The car-rental differentiator
Players in the car-rental industry have long struggled to find ways to differentiate themselves. A Group A car is a Group A car. Savrala GM, Sandile Ntseoane, says there is an increasing realisation that customer service is one of their true differentiators.
“Some of our member company data over the last quarter far exceeds pre-COVID Customer CSI numbers. There is a big drive in the rental industry for customer self-service and the use of technology to improve customer service.”
He continues: “Whilst we are very reliant on vehicle technology to offer what they offer in the European and American markets (our cars are not as advanced), we will see this change in the next couple of years where customer self-service and connected cars are integrated into seamless rental experiences.”
Already the industry is re-building itself, he says. “Better technology will become the norm. New and smaller entrants are setting the scene for better service delivery with the help of technology.”
Unfortunately, the vehicle shortage has been a reality for car-rental companies, he says, and this caused very high utilisation, which normally goes hand-in-hand with lower customer satisfaction levels.
It is easy to say that traveller expectations must change, he adds, but when you have the volumes, you get a good service at a good price. “With low volumes, it’s not always possible to stay open for that one late flight. When there were four airlines all arriving at 23:00, it was cost-effective to provide those services.”
Service delivery from airlines in terms of baggage claims and general airport cleanliness needs to improve, he says.
It is an unfortunate reality that the majority of airports and airlines around the world are currently short-staffed, which is causing much frustration, says Thompsons Holidays CEO, Joanne Adolphe. “We believe this should rectify within the next 12 months, as the various providers get back to pre-COVID times.”
Comair was a vital piece of the puzzle in the South African travel industry, Ntseoane continues, and its exit has left behind a large gap. “Other suppliers are ramping up supply, so I suspect that very soon we will have the supply, but the competitiveness of pricing may take a while to come back.”
He reiterates, however, that people need to learn to plan and book well in advance to get the flights and cars they want at reasonable prices.
