Derek Jones

Kristina Wallen, the dazzling Managing Director of Harp Wallen was kind enough to invite me to a beautiful al fresco celebration of their 20 years in business.   I joined them on the roof of the Marriott Hotel at Marble Arch to share some memories and to toast the future.   It’s a testament to Kristina’s success over the years that most of the great and the good of the travel industry turned up for the event. For me, it was my first public outing since the Kuoni Group announced that REWE had acquired the UK business (subject still to EU approval) and a chance to gauge the industry reaction which, I’m delighted to say, was wholly positive.   A reminder once again that the Kuoni brand enjoys huge affection from colleagues in the industry and that they too had a stake in securing a positive future for the business and the people who work for us. As well as offering up congratulations on a successful outcome, many colleagues were intrigued to hear more about the process...

I hesitate to tell you about Catherine Barnett.  Catherine is head teacher at Eveswell Primary School in Newport, and last week she reignited the debate about children being allowed time off school to take holidays during term time.  In a triumph of lateral thinking, Catherine decided to schedule all of next year’s teacher training (inset) days during the same week in June, meaning parents of pupils at her school can enjoy a lower cost holiday without being penalised with a fine. The reason I’m loathe to bring her plan to the wider attention of the travel industry is because somewhere in the dusty recesses of a tour operator’s head office, those who practice the dark art of yield management will be noting this information and trying to find out exactly which week in June these teachers are to be trained.  After all, such a spike in demand should be worth at least an extra £100 per family on that weekend’s Cardiff departure to Majorca. I exaggerate of course - there...

Every now and then, a faint memory from my childhood is reignited by a random connection with something I happen to be doing right now.  One minute I’m pouring cornflakes into a bowl, the next I’m a seven year old in a purple tank top making Blue Peter’s Thunderbird Island on a Formica kitchen table.  A simple puncture repair on one of the kid’s bikes can instantly create a time-warp, allowing me once again to become Liverpool’s very own Evel Knievel, jumping over other (smaller) children on my red Chopper bike. I’m certain both of these memories are reasonably accurate (even the purple tank top bit) but occasionally something pops up, clear as day, which seems somehow too far-fetched to have really happened. Take this for instance: The other day I’m wondering round an out of town Retail Park when I spot an Argos catalogue pallet.  My mind flies off at a tangent: It’s October, probably 1971, maybe a year either way.  I’m heading out of the front door for schoo...

Simon Reeve is nearing the end of a marathon tour of the UK. Hosted by Kuoni and our partner travel agents, Simon has been talking about his travel experiences and taking questions from customers. Simon’s a lovely guy but he’s definitely not a mouthpiece for Kuoni or for the travel business – he’s a journalist who reports what he sees.  If you’ve watched his TV programmes you’ll know that he’s just as happy talking about the rights of indigenous people in Australia or the challenges of rubbish disposal in the Maldives as he is highlighting the stunning views on the Great Ocean Road or taking a tour of a five star Indian Ocean resort. He’s often asked why he doesn’t focus more on the positive stories (and he concedes that perhaps on occasions he should) but his ‘warts and all’ approach doesn’t put our customers off travelling.  If anything, they’re even keener to taste a destination – even a fly and flop beach holiday to the Caribbean – once they understand more about th...

I’m sure Her Majesty the Queen is very much looking forward to spending a day with the beautiful people of the British travel industry when she officially names the P&O Cruise ship Britannia on Monday. With its Union Jack (Flag?) livery and regal name, Britannia will be a head-turner in every port of call; a mobile endorsement of Brand UK. The Queen might well find herself thinking, ‘What if One wanted One’s own cruise line? How many of these beauties would One’s wealth stretch to?’ The answer sadly for Her Madge, is none! The Sunday Times Rich List puts the Queen’s personal net worth at about £385 million – enough maybe to buy five decks, a few restaurants and possibly a pool or two, but still more than a hundred million short of the full kit and caboodle. And that’s for a Britannia… if she wanted say, an Allure of the Seas she’d be looking at three times that. All of which is a very long winded way of saying cruise ships cost a lot of money… a shed load of money! Not ...

Do more people book holidays in January because that’s when travel companies advertise most, or do we advertise most in January because that’s when more people book holidays? I’m not sure I know the answer to this – it’s probably somewhere in between – but one thing is certain; if customers are persuaded by TV adverts, it’s going to be a bumper start to 2015. Right now, there must be more travel ads on TV than ever before. Airlines, cruise companies, tour operators, travel agents, UK breaks, destinations, bed banks, comparison websites – everyone is up for a piece of the action. Choosing the best is impossible; each one has its own merits. At Kuoni this year we wanted to do something to stand out from the crowd – so we found Lenka, a synchronised swimmer who can walk on water. One of the challenges of travel advertising is that if you’re not careful you end up just advertising holidays, rather than your own individual product. How many holiday ads of recent years can you reall...

The first time I travelled on a plane I was nineteen years old.  Up to that point all of my holidays had been with my family in the UK.  We went by train to caravan parks at the seaside; Skegness, Blackpool, Llandudno, Scarborough.  My childhood was like one great big episode of Coast. They were happy times.  We lived in a terraced house in Liverpool where my dad worked for the Council. I’m sure there were sacrifices that I knew nothing of but we never missed a holiday.  Always a fortnight in August and always packed with excitement.  I must have spent hours playing on tupenny shove machines with my sister at the end of the pier arcades, perfecting my crazy golf windmill timing and throwing chips to seagulls! I fell in love with travel during those summers.  I remember my dad lifting me up to put my head out of the train window (no health and safety back then), watching the world whizz by with the wind in my hair, and knowing that this was all I w...

Trust is a basic building block of business.  Despite signing countless contracts, each of which was negotiated down to the last dotted i and crossed t, I’ve rarely if ever found myself in dispute with any of them.  That’s because contracts are essentially just the written record of an agreement and in business those agreements are normally reached through conversation, discussion and negotiation.  They involve building a relationship with another party. Unless that relationship creates trust there’s no contact to sign – you walk away. It’s the same with brands. Whenever you buy anything you effectively enter into a contract; in return for your money, the seller provides you with the product, it will be of the quality described, and delivered on time to the right place. Trusted brands are those that you’ve already built a relationship with – that you trust to deliver. There’s been a lot of talk recently about the ‘power of personal’ - the importance of human interact...

Occasionally someone gets very carried away and introduces me as CEO of Kuoni UK.  I’m not.  At Kuoni, CEO is more likely to mean Chief Experience Officer.  We have 32 of them – that’s one for every store.  Our Store Managers (CEOs) are the most important people in our customer journey.  Put a great store manager into a poor store and very soon you’ll have a great store.  Put a poor manager into a great store and very quickly you’ll have a poor store. It’s simple. It’s for this reason that I still try to do final interviews for all Kuoni Store Manager appointments.  And that’s how a few months ago I was asked during an interview: ‘What’s Kuoni’s policy on sustainability?’ This was a first – never in twenty years of interviewing had anyone ever asked about the green credentials of the business. With my curiosity aroused I began to ask people around the organisation how important Corporate Social Responsibility was in their choice of employer. The r...

Has the art of the apology been lost?  Maria Miller's stint as Culture Secretary came to a crashing end last week with a 30-second apology.  It was so clearly a box-ticking exercise, without even a hint of remorse, that it made the situation worse not better. Elton John got it wrong - sorry’s not the hardest word any more, in fact it seems to be the easiest.  We’ve perfected the 'admit no blame' apology - 'I'm sorry this upset you' instead of 'I'm sorry I got this wrong.'  Many people now seem to believe that an apology alone is enough – that they don’t need to do anything about it.  But if you don’t mean it, don’t say it; otherwise it’s just empty words when actions are needed. As anyone in the Kuoni Leadership Team (and my family) knows, the five most important words in the English language are ‘I’m sorry I was wrong’.  So important (and rare) is this phrase that I like to draw special attention to it by preceding it with a hand slap drum roll...

This week in Barcelona, ninety thousand people are expected to attend the Mobile World Congress.  Taking place over four days and with over 1,700 exhibitors, the highlight this year will be the keynote speech by Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg.  All the major players will use the event to launch their latest products; the Samsung S5 Smartphone and Smartwatch; the Blackberry Jakarta; the Nokia Normandy; and the Sony Xperia tablet.  You won’t have heard of any them yet, but you will have soon because what happens in Barcelona doesn’t stay in Barcelona – it quickly becomes headline news around the world. Last November, World Travel Market attracted well over 50,000 people to London.  Later this month ITB will bring an incredible 170,000 visitors from around the world to Berlin, and a new event, World Travel Market Africa has just been announced to take place for the first time in Cape Town in May this year.  This is travel networking on a mammoth scale. Thes...

Somewhere deep in our evolutionary history there must have been a time when the survival of our species depended upon a very small number of people; people different from the rest.  These were the ones who spent their lives wondering what lay beyond the horizon.  Not for them the safety and security of the tribe; they were happier with their own company, or with the company of those with the same urge to explore, to wander, to journey. In their villages they were viewed with suspicion.  Who were these daydreamers who preferred to walk for days and days, rather than toil in the fields; these strange ones who would wake early just to watch the sun rise above the mountains, then climb those mountains just to see the view from the top; the ones who would visit other tribes not to conquer them, but to meet with them as equals; to build friendship and understanding. And then occasionally, in times of crisis, when drought or disease brought chaos to their communities, these...

If history decides that the start of this economic downturn was marked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, it should also recognise that the end came during the last thirty seconds of London’s 2014 New Year’s Eve firework display.  If you saw it you’ll know what I’m talking about.   If you didn’t, you really should find it on YouTube.  It was as though Boris still had another fifteen minutes of pyrotechnics up his sleeve, then someone shouted… ‘Stuff it!  All of them… just do all of them!’  It was just one mighty bang.  It felt to me like it was the last lightning bolt of the storm.  As though London was announcing to the world that it was back… and it meant business! I joined Kuoni in March 2009 just as the full impact of the banking crisis was beginning to hit home.  For the first time on record the number of people flying in and out of the UK went into decline as the collective belt was tightened.  House prices sl...

It’s a four hundred mile drive from Sunderland to Bournemouth. If you carry on another four hundred miles in the same direction you end up in Bordeaux which, despite the language difference, probably has more in common with Bournemouth than Sunderland does. All of which makes you wonder why John Hays has chosen to take on this marathon commute and why he thinks his no nonsense Tyne and Wear management style is just what they need down at Bath Travel. It’s difficult to imagine a bigger contrast. It’s like Greggs buying Patisserie Valerie just because they both make cakes. Even the Bournemouth Daily Echo was struggling with the news. In a box headed ‘Similarities’, they noted that both businesses were ‘independent’ and that both ‘have shops’. Then they ran out of things to put in the box. So what’s going on? Well first of all, if anyone can pull this off it’s John. Despite his quiet, disarming demeanour, he combines an academic background with a streetwise, pragmatic appro...

Not so long ago Hilary Clinton told the world in some detail how, during a visit to Bosnia, she had come under sniper fire attack.  It was a great story apart from one small detail; it didn’t actually happen.  When she was asked to explain her previous claim, Hilary plucked a word out of the dictionary that no one had heard for nearly a century.   She said that she had ‘misspoke’. To misspeak is to ‘ express oneself in an insufficiently clear or accurate way’.  It’s not quite the same as lying, which as we all know is not a nice word, but it’s pretty close. I was reminded of Hilary Clinton and her handy new word when I read the news last week that Michael O’Leary had said, ‘We want to work with travel agents.’ Michael’s record in this area is not strong.  The only time I’ve been in the same room as him was at a Lunn Poly Regional Managers’ conference in Dublin in the late nineties.  At the time they’d become very accustomed to suppliers telling th...

A pinch and a punch and January’s over.  All those months of preparation; the marketing plan, the staffing rosters, the offers.  Then the excitement of the first weeks; the TV ads, the incentive launches, the sales meetings.  The inevitable hiccups; the week of snow, the unhelpful news stories about failing high streets and broken planes.  And finally, the dash for the line at the end of the month – beating targets, breaking records or falling short.  And as always, some small unanticipated changes, as customers evolve, their tastes move on and their buying habits shift.  Sometimes these changes are slow.  All-inclusive used to be a niche board arrangement in a small number of hotels; now it has dedicated brochures and, in the case of First Choice, even a dedicated tour operator. We’ve all grown used to dealing with these evolutionary changes but you only have to look at HMV and Jessops to see that even progressive long term changes in customer be...

For the past few weeks I’ve been on the receiving end of a few passionate comments made by some of our valued independent agents about changes we’re making to the way Kuoni will now look after its trade sales.  Let me start by saying I hear you all and I do appreciate the value of the relationships many of you have established over time with our homeworkers, the staff in our shops and in our call centre.  It’s only natural for us all to wish to keep a valued relationship going. But this industry is crammed full of fun, knowledgeable, efficient and responsive characters and we have a larger than life collection of them in our Dorking head office who now relish the challenge of looking after you all and helping you convert as many bookings as possible.  We’re all capable of forging new and exciting relationships – it’s what happens up and down the country in all businesses.  To use that old adage, change is part of life.  We’re developing and growing our trade ...

Last week Abta issued a press release commenting on a survey they had commissioned.  The survey of 2,000 consumers asked if they valued the services of a travel agent; 40% said they did, up from 30% last year.  It also reported a modest increase in the percentage of customers booking their holiday through a High Street travel agent, up from 25% in 2011 to 27% in 2012.  Meanwhile, the number of people saying they booked a DIY holiday fell from 43% in 2011 to 27% in 2012. It wasn’t the results of the survey that drew my attention – it was the (over)reaction of many in the online sector.  A small recovery in the attractiveness of face to face service, and the reasonable interpretation of this by Abta that some customers valued the help of a human being, was greeted with various attacks on the spin, the numbers and even Abta itself. Let’s be clear, this survey does not mark the death of the OTAs. It confirms that 60% of people don’t value the services of a travel ag...

Almost exactly six months ago today, we removed all on-line discounts from the Kuoni website creating a completely level playing field for agents.  Since then we’ve been closely monitoring our performance by channel to evaluate the impact. A number of interesting things have happened to convince us that we’re on the right track.  Most notably, we’ve seen a significant increase in sales enquiry conversion across all of our distribution channels – trade and direct.  We’re not surprised - our assertion was always that customer behaviour has evolved.  The internet is now an integral part of the shopping experience, used to guide the buying process, but it’s not necessarily the way customers want to book.  They will book online when it’s convenient for them and when they have all of the facts they need, but they intensely dislike being forced to in order to achieve a saving.  Presented with the same price in all channels, customers will generally migrate to t...

Andrew Marr and James Naughty have both recently been guilty of the same unfortunate mistake when they inadvertently mis-introduced the ‘Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt’.  Strangely the same mispronunciation seemed to be affecting some parts of the travel industry last week, only this time it was harder to pin all the blame on Dr Spooner. Mr Hunt you see, has hit upon a plan so cunning that in the words of Blackadder ‘You could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel.’  (Cunning Hunt… be careful!)  Starting next month, the Department of Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport will be spending £4 million pounds of taxpayers money on its biggest ever TV advertising blitz with one purpose in mind - to stop your customers going overseas on holiday this summer.  The strapline... ‘There’s so much happening in Britain in 2012, why on earth would you want to go abroad?’ Thanks Mr Hunt.  I imagine £4 million is just the interest you’ve earned this month on all that APD re...

How many brands are you really loyal to? When the time comes to replace your car is it automatically another Ford, another BMW or another VW you choose? When you head off for your weekly shop is it a regular visit to the same Tesco, or ASDA or Waitrose? And when it’s time to book your holiday is it Thomson, Thomas Cook or your local independent you turn to for advice and help? Loyalty is funny concept. In my experience there are precious few things that people are categorically and consistently loyal to; sports teams, political parties, religions, family and country. After that it seems to me it’s mostly all about convenience, habit and laziness. I’m exceptionally loyal to the post office shop in my village for the sole reason that it’s a two minute walk from my front door. When I do a big shop I know that ASDA is a little bit nearer than Tesco and probably cheaper, but I’m just in the habit of shopping at Tesco - it’s familiar and I know where everything is. I even head to t...

Even by the standards of the travel industry last week was a tumultuous one.  As I write, Thomas Cook’s share price is trading at 67 having been at 200 in January, and Gill’s Cruise Centre is officially no longer trading at all, having been sold on as part of a pre-pack administration deal. On the face of it these two events appear to be unconnected; Thomas Cook a victim of the Arab Spring, with demand for their charter based holidays in Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey and Morocco negatively impacted by political events in the region; Gill’s thrown off course by an expensive relocation to central London and then struggling to come to terms with the commission reductions recently announced by major cruise lines. This isn’t the first time we’ve had major players experiencing difficulties - think of Airtours and Cruise Control - but it is the first time it’s happened in the era of social media.  If you were on Twitter at the weekend you may have seen Thomas Cook trending in the UK ....

Mary Portas ‘Queen of Shops’ does not come across to the casual observer as someone who is often stuck for words, but after a barnstorming presentation in Madrid at last week’s Advantage Conference she was brought to a standstill by the very first question from the audience. For seasoned travel conference attendees the question was as familiar as the houses they live in: ‘How can travel agents stop customers from taking their advice then just walking away and booking on the internet?’   Good old Mary stood stock still in the scariest pair of open-toed wedge platform shoes I’ve ever seen and in a single word gave the most honest – and shortest - answer I’ve ever heard on a conference stage - ‘Dunno!’  To be fair to Mary I imagine she thought she was going to be asked how we should transform the travel agent experience, but she had over-estimated her audience.  Such questions are for other high street retailers – in travel it seems it’s just about the price. ...

Now that the dust is starting to settle, I’ve been trying to get to grips with why Complete Cruise Solutions would court such controversy and risk so much business by radically reducing their commission. To understand the root cause of the current predicament that cruise companies find themselves in, it’s necessary to travel back in time to when the High Street was beginning to be dominated by the vertically integrated travel agencies.  One in particular had a very aggressive discount policy.  In a relatively short space of time Lunn Poly managed to create for itself a virtuous circle; growing market share with unprecedented discounting, then translating the resulting volume into higher commissions which in turn allowed for even harder discounting. The non-vertically integrated tour operators and cruise companies found themselves with a difficult choice to make: Pay higher commissions and keep the sales coming in or walk away and rely solely on independent agents for ...

At the risk of sounding a bit weird, I often find myself quietly analysing the way people behave in certain situations.  One that’s always intrigued me is the last few minutes of a formal business meeting; the bit after the main purpose of the meeting has been achieved but before the meeting is properly over. After a polite bit of banter there’s generally a signal from the host that time’s up; ‘Well, thanks for coming over…’ is always a good one.  Then everyone stands up and shuffles round the room trying to shake everyone else’s hand.  Sometimes this involves a lot of hand shaking and close attention is required to avoid inadvertently shaking the hand of a colleague, or shaking the same hand twice, but with practice anyone can do it. And then the business cards come out, or at least they did until recently when suddenly a new and unexpected twist began to emerge.  Instead of proffering a business card people started to ask if I was on Facebook and then sayi...