The Travel Network Group (TTNG) has announced the promotion of Lisa Henning to chief operating officer and Vim Vithaldas as chief commercial officer, with Alexis Coles Barrasso taking the reins as the head of public relations and communications.
In her address to delegates at the event in Budapest, Ms Henning said her three main commitments in her new role as chief operating officer will be to launch a recruitment service, a training services academy and to hold open days at the head office in Woking.
She said the recruitment service was aimed at saving members time, ensuring the right people are recruited and offering members guidance and advice on HR functions, such as performance appraisals. The service will cover aspects of recruiting such as evaluating CVs, profiling, and conducting interviews. Meanwhile, the training services will cover employees at all levels, from new starters through to refresher courses to re-energise established travel industry professionals.
Ms Henning also outlined her plans for promoting cruise business, such as improved systems, a deal of the day seven days a week, weekly cruise competitor analysis and cruise trading updates, cruise incentives, seminars and exclusive marketing for cruise products.
Mr Vithaldas started his address with an analysis of UK travel industry growth over the past year, with an overall year-on-year growth of 4.8%. He then broke this down into sectors, with the cruise sector (river and ocean) reporting a 47% increase in revenue, a 29.24% increase in revenue for touring and a 16.35% increase in revenue for long-haul.
However, the Europe and short-haul sector is down 13.63% and UK breaks are down by 12.5%. He partly attributed the increase in long haul revenue to a reduced differentiation in price between long- and short-haul holidays. Additionally, he said that "continuation of economic uncertainty" and "unhelpful mainstream journalism", such as stories warning consumers not to book holidays after March 29 were not helping agents, particularly in regard to the European and short-haul sectors.
For his 2019 commitments in his new role, Mr Vithaldas said he planned to introduce weekly and monthly trading reports with advice on how to use the data effectively, educational events, a search-and-find database to assist agents in finding products and packages, and enhanced trading opportunities with good incentives.
