At our Business Partner Forum held in Manchester on Thursday 22nd June, we announced the launch of our new Training Academy, a project that we have been working on for the past few months, which is designed to support Members’ business training needs.
This programme is a continuation of the Business Development Action Plan launched in early 2022 and it includes a mix of face-to-face workshops, virtual webinars and online content, which can be used to refresh Members’ own and their teams’ knowledge, and it can also act as a new starter training pack.
For the face-to-face workshops, The Travel Network Group engaged a number of Members in separate focus groups, so that the delivery of the training sessions could be tailored specifically to what a travel business needs.
These workshops have been designed with the customer journey in mind and will be focused on:
- Sales – focusing on the sales process and how to Connect with customers, Discover the customers’ requirements, Create the perfect holiday and gain Commitment for the booking.
- Customer Service and Retention – with a focus on understanding the customer touchpoints, how to provide a tailor-made service and customer loyalty.
- Business Management – will cover Recruitment and HR processes: how to attract new talent and onboard new members of the team, and equally as important – how to retain and develop your exiting teams.
- Marketing – The marketing workshops will continue to focus on how to attract new customers, how to manage existing customers and how to improve upon the touch points in the booking process.
- PR – TTNG will be partnering with a travel journalist who will be able to share best practices in the world of travel press.
- Product and Business Partners – these sessions will focus on navigating Business Partners with specific workshops on How to sell Ancillaries, Luxury, Ski, Cruise, Flights, Touring, Mainstream.
- Travel Regulations and Compliance – a compliance expert will guide Members through ATOL, Package Travel Regulations and GDPR.
Stephanie Slark, Director of Membership Services at The Travel Network Group said: ‘For the past few months, we have worked with different experts on creating this new training proposition, which will support our Members with their training needs – the content is diverse and can be relevant to business managers and owners, to existing travel professionals, as well as to new to travel recruits.
We know that sometimes finding time out of their business to attend in-person seminars is not the easiest task, therefore we are re-formatting all the content for our in-person workshops and we will make this available onto our new online training platform. The online content will be designed as ‘bite-size training’, that can be completed across several days, and our Members will be able to track their team’s progress in terms of completed modules.’
Gary Lewis, CEO of The Travel Network Group added: ‘Our Members are so successful because their customers trust their expertise when it comes to booking their next holiday. As a membership organisation, we do everything we can to support our Members engage with their customers and sell more holidays. We know that recruitment into our industry and retaining existing teams has been challenging post-pandemic, so if there are tools that we can offer to our Members, to support them in these two areas, then we know that investing in a training proposition is the right decision for us as a business’.
