Travel Counsellors is creating a flourishing travel ecosystem, evidenced partially by its performance over the past year.
During the 2022/23 financial year, Travel Counsellors achieved record-breaking bookings, to the tune of £933 million (R22 billion) – its best year ever and a 23% increase from the previous period.
In the first month of 2024, it broke a record with its best monthly performance, generating £125 million (R2,99 billion) in sales. And, shortly after the start of 2024, it achieved a major milestone, counting more than 2 024 travel counsellors, or TCs, across its six markets.
“All things being equal, we will turn over R25 billion this year,” Jim Eastwood, Global Sales Director for Travel Counsellors, told Travel News.
Financial prowess aside, Travel Counsellors believes that its sales are more than transactional.
“Our purpose is to create bespoke outcomes for customers for whom we can create the biggest impact, and this cannot be transactional only… When all things are equal, everyone wins,” said Mladen Lukic, MD of Travel Counsellors South Africa.
Lukic was speaking at the Travel Counsellors South Africa annual conference. Under the banner of ‘One Team’, South Africa’s TCs convened for a three-day event between March 15 and 17 at Irene Country Lodge in Centurion.
Lukic highlighted the conference as being by far the most important interaction between Travel Counsellors and its TCs. He talked about creating an ecosystem in which TCs could thrive and grow, supported by an “absolutely indestructible” business model.
Travel Counsellors’ model provides each TC with the flexibility to work from home or an office, and some TCs run massive businesses with full staff – to the tune of R250 million in turnover. This flexibility has lent itself well to the agility of each TC’s operation, but it would not be possible without a significant investment into Travel Counsellors’ platform, which Lukic says has been the company’s greatest expense. It has also been one of the reasons that they have won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise three times.
Market day
Recognising the pivotal role suppliers play in the business of travel, the first day of the conference was dedicated to speed marketing sessions between TCs and more than 45 different suppliers. Groups of up to three TCs had five minutes to engage with companies specialising in air travel, cruises, car rentals, hotels and lodges, and several other tour operators.
Travel News spoke to many of the suppliers at the event, who revealed that they found the conference to be exceptionally beneficial. It was an opportunity for them to not just market their products and services but also engage face-to-face with many of the TCs that they typically only talk to over the phone or via email.
Strat sessions
The second day of the Travel Counsellors conference was a full day of informative presentations from some of the group’s top management. In addition, two guest speakers were invited to the stage to show TCs how they can approach their business, mainly working in such a demanding role.
Veli Ndaba, who refers to himself as ‘The NeuroEngineer’, spoke extensively on success being an inside-out process, comparing a travel adviser’s job to an egg’s fragility. If the egg is subjected to external pressures without any reinforcement from within, it is crushed. However, with proper fortification, it can weather the storm, which is why mental well-being is so key to the role of a TC.
“Anxiety steals from your cognitive ability,” said Ndaba.
Siwelile Thusi, a Lead Strategist from M&C Saatchi Abel, also took to the stage to demonstrate the power of storytelling in the context of what Travel Counsellors does. She emphasised the value proposition of each TC, calling them ‘magicians’ and encouraging them to “reframe, reclaim, and ramp up”.
‘Lifechanging’
Travel Counsellors’ approach, as explained by Eastwood, is anchored in three pillars that it refers to as TLC: talent, leading performance, and community. Some TCs describe their move to Travel Counsellors as being ‘life changing’, and many, such as Kerith Hulme, say it has allowed them the financial and physical freedom that they didn’t have before.
Hulme is an experienced businessowner who had to make a very difficult decision to close her previous business, but, in doing so, it also opened up many doors for her. Today, she is one of Travel Counsellors’ top-performing TCs and won the award for Best Phenix Sales during a gala dinner that took place on Saturday, March 26.
The following day, TCs were split across workshops on Premier Leisure and Concierge Corporate, the latter of which is becoming a growing focus for Travel Counsellors as it accounts for a third of global bookings. Central to the success of these services is reporting.
“Management reporting is seriously important but seriously underutilised,” said Ian Keane, Operations and Corporate Business Development Manager at Travel Counsellors. South African TCs can look forward to a new reporting suite in June.
The conference concluded with an inspiring talk from Darren Thomas, a talented para-athlete who lost the ability to walk in a home invasion in 2007, during which he was shot and paralysed from the chest down. Thomas has come a long way since, and the father-of-two competed at the Wodapalooza Fitness Festival at the beginning of the year, coming third in his category. Attendees were incredibly moved by his story and left the conference feeling motivated and ready to tackle their tasks with a positive mindset.
