The group admitted last August that it was reviewing its wholesaler relationships after conceding that Lowcosttravelgroup’s demise had “probably been the biggest failure to affect Travel Counsellors” since the company set up the financial protection trust in 2004.
Chief executive Steve Byrne has now confirmed that following the review of its commercial agreements the company took “two or three” suppliers off sale. He added that Travel Counsellors was now firmly focused on using reputable suppliers.
“We are putting much firmer and clearer service level agreements in place with suppliers, covering the quality of what is supplied and the commercial terms, including things like response times, health and safety, and how they deal with complaints,” he told TTG. “We want to get to the point where we have a quality kitemark.”
It came as Byrne revealed the homeworking specialist was continuing in its customer service drive to target turnover of £600 million for 2018 – an increase of £100 million.
"We are putting much firmer and clearer service level agreements in place with suppliers, covering the quality of what is supplied and the commercial terms, including things like response times, health and safety, and how they deal with complaints"
Travel Counsellors also aims to double its members’ one million customers in the next three to five years. Byrne told TTG the UK business was on track to grow 15% this year and that the growth was being delivered through three key areas.
These include the recruitment of more counsellors, particularly business travel specialists in the UK and South Africa; helping its members to grow their own businesses; plus technological improvements, with a £4.2 million investment made in IT each financial year.
Elsewhere, Byrne revealed that the majority of its sales are now "not through operators".
“We don’t own our own product but in effect we are a tour operator," he said. The majority of our sales now are not through operators. We source the component parts.
“This enables us to be closer to the source of the product, it protects against operators going direct to the customer and it drives better value for customers and TCs (Travel Counsellors).
“We do maintain a long list of operators which TCs can use though so customers have a choice.”
Asked about the future, Byrne said that there were no current plans for Travel Counsellors to float on the stock market, but agreed it would be an option “down the line”.
