Talking training

Sundar: Yes, you’d be surprised – at my last CTA [Certified Travel Associate] course – of 14 students, 11 came from the trade. They paid for it off their own backs. And 70% of those interviewed in our survey said they are willing to pay on their own, anything between AED500 – AED 1000 for a good course if they can get it in installments to do it. I think it’s fair to say there is a good amount of energy left with the individuals who want to aspire.

ATN: Given how much it costs, who should be paying for training and how can agencies be persuaded to make the investment?

Tricia: Maybe the solution is we re-think how we reward people in the travel industry. It should be through training because it makes people more marketable. Agencies could put a plan in place for their staff so that there’s a goal that you reach and your reward is that you get to attend one of these training modules.

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I don’t think people should have to pay for it. Really it should be your company, your employer who pays for training. So pay for your staff – invest in them. Or put training into their programme and let them pay it in installments, or pay you back later. There are other ways to look at it without just saying, it costs this much. It all goes back to the importance of investing in your people.

Varghese: It comes down to the culture of the company. At Kanoo, even during the recession we conducted training throughout the company. We have it in our company guidelines that we should set a budget for AED 2000 per employee for training purposes and staff must spend a minimum 48 hours every year on training. We have a training manager who conducts a lot of training from customer retention to customer relationships – in fact four of our staff are going to London next week for an American Express training session.

It’s important for us to invest in our people, to be knowledgeable, to know what is happening in the market and to impart the best services to our customers – that is the culture of Kanoo Group.

The deputy chairman Mishal Kanoo is very interested in our people to go and get more education and has introduced a policy such as if you want to get an MBA the company will pay 50%. This has to come from the leadership. If they are involved that’s the way that these things can move forward.

ATN: How can we ensure that the entire travel trade benefits from access to training - not just the larger agencies?

Tricia: Companies are providing training individually – but enough of doing it individually – let’s join forces. And let’s start as a team collaborating on how can we get this out to everyone else. It doesn’t matter who comes. Part of that is the market coming together as a whole under one umbrella. This market is in direct contrast to other markets I think – such as the UK, where all the agents want to be part of ABTA. You want to be in the group as you get something in return.

Sundar: As in what happens in other mature markets – training should be a must. After a certain number of years in a company you should have to have a certain amount of training. That standardisation of the industry has to come in a combination between semi-government initiatives, which could involve a body like DTTAG taking the lead.

Mohsin: I second what Sundar is saying. I think it would help to improve the service levels in the industry if they made training mandatory. All the travel agency associations should say: “This is what the travel agents should be doing in regards to training.”

Leo: The issue is with the Civil Aviation Authority and the DTCM. We have got about 74 members now of DTTAG now – its creeping up – but there are something like 300 travel agents in the market. So DTCM have no interest. That’s why the key issue is driving membership of DTTAG and why I keep reaching out to the non-members of DTTAG and saying tell us what you want.

There is a suspicion on one side from the travel trade and an indifference on the other side from the government as they think, oh well there’s only 70 agents in the body.

The problem is too many of the agencies don’t want any transparency – that suits a great deal of the travel trade here. They are the ones that don’t join DTTAG. We had a situation where EmQuest gave ten agencies the first year fees for free and they still wouldn’t join. That shows the lack of interest from many agencies in this market. For a membership fee of just AED2000 a year, if you look at the value of the training we’re providing, two people a year would more than pay for this.

ATN: Finally, what’s the one thing that needs to change in order to improve the professionalism of the industry as a whole?
Sundar: Training has to be subsidised and given to everyone to say if you get into this industry, this is the pre-requisite. Something like the National Skills development in the UK or in the US the Certified Travel Associate(CTA) – it’s a certification which most travel industry professionals recognise. You can actually put it behind your family name and carry it around.

Mohsin: There should be a fixed amount that each agency has to pay each year, then agencies will be forced to send staff for training on rotation. Then you can basically turn all your staff into professionals.

Tricia: The bigger guys in the market like EmQuest, DTTAG, Kanoo, etc the ones that have an influence, it’s part of our responsibility to do what we can. Maybe at EmQuest we could influence more training and work it into our business model, incentivise it more. The GDSs could all get together to decide to include soft skills training as part of our incentive package in agencies contracts, for example you get X amount of dollars to spend on training. This is something that could be done across all the industry.

Varghese: Even the national airlines should take some sort of interest in the travel trade when it comes to training. They have done it in the past. I think we should be able to go to them and say, we are still doing the service for you, why don’t you do any training for our staff? A couple of times they did participate in this with us.

Annie: I think together we can do a lot. There should be someone taking a lead on this and putting concrete steps into place. It’s a huge thing that DTTAG and Emquest have started the ball rolling. It’s about giving back to the industry. I’ve been in the industry now almost 20 years so I’d love to give something back to the industry. We should have a pool of trainers, and establish a travel trainer networking sessions and then we pool our resources, as part of the travel fraternity we could do trainings for free, weekends or one-on-one.

ATN’s roundtable was held in the VIP suite at the Dusit Thani Hotel, Dubai.