Manual of Travel Agency Practice

Jane Archer, Gwenda Syratt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136380853
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Now in its third edition, this successful must-have manual is thoroughly updated with new chapters and material, covering issues including: * Technology development - the different types of travel agency systems available, what they do, how they do it and how to use them
* The Internet - how it is used to book travel, forecasts for its future use and how travel agenets stand in relation to it
* Global distribution systems - how to make bookings, and the new windows-based environment
* A full endorsement by Travel Weekly The manual demonstrates correct methods for processing travel reservations, identifying business client needs and suitable documentation. It also shows key facts for the profitable planning, organization and operation of the retail travel agency. Each chapter contains exercises pertinent to the topics covered.Students on any of the large number of courses in travel and tourism (ICM, City & Guilds, ABTA, IATA, UFTAA, BTEC, SCOTVEC, University of Oxford Certificate, Diploma of Vocational Education) will find this book invaluable.

Introduction

If you are interested in being part of the travel and tourism scene you have chosen to be part of an industry with a very long history and a bright, although ever changing, future. Tourism has been defined as the movement of people away from their normal place of residence and if we delve way back into history we will realise people have always travelled.

Merchants travelled to trade with other countries or tribes, Greeks and Romans travelled extensively as their empires increased, and people were travelling for pleasure in 776 BC for the first Olympic Games! Travellers would stay in monasteries but if we move swiftly forward to the seventeenth century when sprung coaches were in use drawn by horses, this brought about the need for inns and many of them can be seen today used as public houses and restaurants, still with the original oak beams and stables. It was necessary to change the team of horses because they were driven at high speed between the inns en route. Later we have the same parallel with railways when the rail companies built small towns around depots where train locomotives were changed, because, like horses, the locomotives were unable to complete a long journey in one go.

Now let’s look at just a few dates in our long history of tourism because I’m sure there will be names you will recognise to be going strong even today.

1825	The first railway opened from Stockton to Darlington – steam train.
1830	Liverpool to Manchester opened and brought about the world’s first rail fatality. Mr Huskisson was a local member of parliament and was at the opening ceremony (as was the Duke of Wellington). He was run down by a locomotive at Parkside Station and later died of his injuries.
1840	Cunard built the first steamship for leisure cruises.
1841	Thomas Cook opened the first travel agency and organised tours by train.
1855	We have the all-inclusive tour business.
1879	Thomas Cook organised the first package tours to Europe and the USA.
1881	Frames Tours (now Frames Rickard) was founded.
1899	The Savoy and Claridges hotels were opened in London.

By Victorian England, wealthy citizens were travelling to Germany and Switzerland and enjoying ski holidays. At the same time we had developments in sea travel by steamship to the USA, the pioneers being Thomas Cook and Sir Henry Lunn, now Lunn Poly. Around this time American Express, founded partly by Henry Wells and William Fargo, of Wells Fargo fame, initiated money orders and traveller’s cheques.

There were radical changes after the First World War (1914–1918) with the development of cars, rail, hotels, holiday centres and longer paid holidays. The Second World War (1939–1945) brought about more radical changes with aircraft and cheap package holidays. Tour operators were formed, private car ownership increased and motorways, motels and ferry services all saw increased growth. Two very good places to learn more is to visit The London Transport Museum at Covent Garden Plaza, WC2 (tel: [phone]) and the archives at Thomas Cook, 15 Coningsby Road, Peterborough, PE38 5B (tel: [phone]).

When people have more time to spare they begin to look for ways to spend those hours and usually turn to recreation. In the Western world we have second-generation senior citizens, people who retire between the ages of 50 and 60, with some aged between 70 and 90, many of whom are all eager to travel and are a growing area of the market. Recent statistics show that 29 million people travel from Britain each year, spending £15 billion. Worldwide approximately 120 million people are employed in the travel and tourism industry.

Travel and tourism is a fast-growing industry, which ebbs and flows according to circumstance, but which responds well to the changes taking place around the world. So where do you fit into this industry? This book hopes to answer some of your questions about the tourism industry. It explains the different types of agency, and the services provided. It gives background knowledge on the products, technology, skills and finance at various levels. If you are working in the travel industry, I hope this book will help to add to your product knowledge, and if you are still at the ‘deciding’ stage, I hope it will help to formulate your plans.

The kind of work carried out in a travel agency is enormously varied. It is nearly always satisfying, mainly because you never stop learning – the scene is always changing. A travel agency is just a link in the long chain and through this book you will get an insight into the whole picture of the travel industry.

I wish you a happy (lucrative!), exciting and satisfying career. Good luck!

Package and
group tours

In this chapter we are going to discuss:

• How package tours began
• Choosing a package tour
• Information found in brochures
• Components of a package tour
• Planning a group tour to include marketing, costing, brochure production and advertising
• Deterrents to tourism
• Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA)
• Air Travel Organiser’s Licence (ATOL)
• ‘Bare bones’ and ‘tiered pricing’
• Package tour laws
• Chain of distribution
• Horizontal integration
• Types of travel agency and sales outlets
• Changes in working conditions

Introduction

Although we have a wonderful variety of work to do within the travel agency environment, the bulk of it probably stems from airline reservations and package holidays. There are numerous holiday brochures from which to choose and many offer the same destinations. So how can you help your client to choose the right one for them?

First of all, in the UK there are actually very few independent package tour companies. One company will operate under several different names. There has been much consolidation in the past 2 or 3 years. It should also be said that many travel agencies enjoy the ‘overriding commission’ system, whereby, for showing loyalty to a big tour operator or their subsidiary, a higher rate of commission will be paid above an agreed total of sales. Tour operators also offer personal incentive gains to travel consultants offering free holidays or gift vouchers to be spent in large, popular department stores. These factors could well influence the travel consultant when helping the client to choose the right package tour! The customer’s choice must always come first, and the traveller can also benefit from a closer working relationship between tour operator and travel agent where product knowledge is concerned.

How did package tours begin? As often happens when we dig back into history, there is doubt about who was first. There cannot be any doubt that Thomas Cook made the greatest impact on the travel and tourism industry with the packaging of group tours. In 1841, as secretary of the South Midland Temperance Association, Cook organised an excursion for his members from Leicester to Loughborough at a fare of one shilling return (approximately five pence today). Five hundred and seventy passengers took part in this successful venture and this encouraged him to continue by chartering trains for specific holidays. The business continued to grow, and by 1841 Thomas Cook had opened the first travel agency, and in 1879 organised the first package tours to Europe and the USA.

But it is really in the late 1940s and early 1950s that package tours to warm, sunny places in the Mediterranean, such as Majorca, the Spanish coastline and Italy, began. An excess of aircraft after the Second World War, longer paid holidays, more disposable income and families wanting to holiday together after (often) years of separation all contributed to the increase in package tours.

Vladimir Raitz has been credited with establishing the mass charter air movement to the sun as we know it today. In 1949, he was left £3000 by his grandmother and with this launched Horizon Holidays by organising an inclusive tour to Corsica, using tented accommodation.

At the time of writing, two tourists have travelled into space at a cost of approximately £14 million each. The travel industry has come a long way from the first adventurous overseas holiday to Benidorm in the early 1950s.

Another pioneer – for ski packages – is Erna Low, who died in 2002 aged 92 years. The former Austrian javelin champion was studying in London in 1932 when she placed an advertisement in the Morning Post saying ‘Viennese undergraduate taking party to Austria, fortnight £15’. The plan was to fund a trip to see her parents but it marked the start of her pioneering contribution to the British travel industry. In 1948, Erna Low offered an all-inclusive fortnight skiing holiday to Murren, Switzerland, and the package ski holiday was born.

Let’s think about the different elements that encourage a client to choose one package tour from another.

It is not always price. Certainly prices do vary for exactly the same holiday, and this is mainly due to one tour operator negotiating more favourable competitive rates with the principals (i.e. hoteliers and transport suppliers) than another. The more guests a tour operator is able to guarantee to a hotel week after week, the cheaper the accommodation becomes. Other factors affecting choice may be:

• Reputation of tour operator

• Previous experience of consumer

• Airline used

• Aircraft type

• Flight times

• Airport of departure

...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Package and group tours
• 3 Short breaks, special interest holidays, theme parks, holiday centres, accommodation and theatre reservations
• 4 Coaching and incoming tourism
• 5 Cruising
• 6 Car rental
• 7 Ferry services and railways
• 8 Airlines
• 9 Technology
• 10 The Internet
• 11 Insurance
• 12 Finance
• 13 Skills
• 14 Handling complaints
• Solutions
• Glossary of terms
• Index