IT’S not easy birthing a new travel package business into the market, and it’s even more difficult to gain the trade’s acceptance of it.
However, that is the task being helmed by Imagine Cruising’s new Director of B2B, Katrina McAlpine, who took on the role just three months ago.
The former Cunard Commercial Director has spent much of her first days on the job face-to-face with travel advisors to ensure they understand what is offered by the business’ relatively new B2B proposition, which launched last year. Her goal is for Imagine to be the number one partner for agents for package products.
Having spent years on the other side of the aisle, McAlpine knows agents will need to trust her product in order to get there. This means her job will be to highlight the occasionally invisible detail Imagine includes in its product which is not immediately obvious on the sticker price.
“These other products in the market may look and feel similar, but when we have a look at how we put ours together, they [will] know that their guests are going to be so well looked after,” McAlpine considered. “This is a big piece of what our BDMs are doing at the moment: going out and really asserting, ramping up our position in the market to communicate these values to our travel agent partners.”
Overseeing this commitment is Imagine’s 20 staff who are permanently based in the hotels and resorts the business partners with. Every one of the 40,000 packages the business sells each year is hosted, with a staff member on hand to greet travellers in the lobby upon their arrival.
Before the guest arrives, checks and balances have been carried out both in and around the property to ensure, as McAlpine puts it, the accommodation is good enough that you’d be happy to book it for your own family. This includes porterage, a verified minimum of four stars, the ability for a tour bus to pull up to the front door of the lobby, and an extra night’s booking for early morning arrivals, so they can check in and access their room immediately.
Guests are also looked after before they arrive, with any connecting flights booked with at least a 90-minute layover. Those with stops of four hours or more are treated to a lounge or hotel day pass.
However, the elephant in the room standing between advisors and the product they sell is the direct targeting of customers in an attempt to cut the agent community out of the equation.
Imagine has gone to great lengths to ensure its advisor partners can trust this will not happen.
“We have a dedicated call centre just for travel agents, and all bar one of the consultants in our call centre have been retail travel agents themselves,” McAlpine said. “They speak in the same language, they know the pressure points of having a customer.
“The only time that we contact your guests from a travel agent perspective is if there’s an emergency,” she explained. This means the business and the advisor community are not competing for the same bookings.
Ultimately, Imagine is trying to build a platform that complements its partners’ current offerings, McAlpine said. The company’s goal is to continue to evolve its offering based of the needs and the feedback of the industry.
While the business will be selling product not found anywhere else, such as Monaco Grand Prix departures, and cruises hosted by celebrity chef Manu Fieldel, McAlpine recognises it is the care taken in each booking – for both traveller and advisor – that will win the trade’s loyalty.
“We want to make sure that we are building trust, and a lot of the discussions that I’ve been having with travel agents has been around putting the customer first.”
