Friday 13th did prove to be an eventful day at Travel Counsellors, but not for sinister or fateful reasons. We celebrated the best sales day in the TC family’s 16 year history.

Steve Byrne, Managing Director

The success of our 1200 Travel Counsellors throughout the world so far this year is not unique and there are others in the services and retail sectors doing amazing things. Their stories and ours do though illustrate a wider point. On Friday, over two thousand individual customers chose to book their holiday or arrange their corporate travel trip with their personal Travel Counsellor. They didn’t have to; in the same way a customer does not need to shop in one supermarket or another. As a customer, you have a wide range of choice in travel and indeed that choice has never been greater – you can go to other agents, book with an online agent or do it yourself, either on-line or over the phone by contacting hotels and airlines directly. There has never been an age when the customer has been so empowered not to have to use an agent.

But on Friday 13th, 2,000 customers of different backgrounds and with different needs chose to book with their Travel Counsellor. In some cases, it will have been because of price and whilst we do ensure that we offer choices to suit all budgets, price will not have been the main reason. On a day when many customers could have chosen to do it themselves or book online, our customers didn’t and the reasons for that appear to be twofold;

1. Great sales people need to be experts; and
2. They are not just experts in travel, but more importantly in ‘emotion’ and ‘emotional intelligence’.

So what on earth does that mean?! In its simplest and most human form, they are nice people, who get to understand their customers, empathize with them and show them that they care.

With all of the great advancements in technology, there is not a computer in the world that can make a person feel as special; or read the emotion in someone’s face; or share stories that people can relate to. It cannot express gratitude in a way that can be achieved by a person and that shows in a genuine way that they care and what they offer and do is ‘just for you’. And that is what our Travel Counsellors and other great agents and companies do.

As Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks says, it pays to “care more than others think wise”. So Friday 13th shows the future belongs to those that can build relationships and show they care.

What do you think? If you’ve got a story to tell us about booking with your Travel Counsellor last week, we’d love to hear from you. Just send your story to mystory@travelcounsellors.com. You never know it might appear in our next collection of stories that we collate in our customer stories books. More on these to follow…