March news

This month has been dominated by the war in the Middle East.  This has caused a lot of flight disruption with customers unable to get to/from Australia and New Zealand by the usual route/carriers as most fly via the Middle East.  Agents have been spending a huge amount of time rerouting /rebooking customers which has obviously given less time for selling to new customers.  Demand for long haul travel is also obviously down due to the global economic uncertainty and the problems with flights to New Zealand and Australia via Middle East.

ITB in Berlin was better than previous years even with Middle East issues with higher numbers of arranged meetings and drop-in meetings.  Lots of follow up from ITB!  There has also been PATA agent training events in the UK plus updates from Tourism Australia (Amsterdam) and Tourism New Zealand.

April and May:

We have 2 x Travel Counsellors agent training events in Essex and London, Prestige Holidays agent training event in Cheltenham and also an ANZCRO agent training event in Bristol.  All of these are in April.  There will be more in May, but event bookings are not committed yet due to Middle East.  There will also obviously be Trenz and ATE taking many product managers to NZ/Australia if they can get there!