DTTAG reveals plans to get agency owners on board

The newly-elected president of the Dubai Travel and Tour Agents Group (DTTAG) has revealed his plans to get Dubai's travel agency owners involved with the association in a bid to shake up standards in the industry.

Majid Al Mulla, vice president of Dnata Travel said that without "buy-in" from the owners of travel agencies; the industry will struggle to move forward. Al Mulla has created an 'Owners Club' which will act as a forum for agency owners to meet and discuss the issues impacting the travel trade.

"We have got two levels of management in these travel management companies. The first is the general managers and managers who are running the companies; and then you have the owners," said Al Mulla.

“One of the objectives of us is to create the ‘Owners Club’ where we can gather the owners in order to have them understand where this industry is going."

Al Mulla said it was imperative that travel agency owners understood how the travel business was changing today; and how investment in technology and increased services levels were vital in order to stay ahead.

"The owner might not be involved in the details of the business. They might be involved in the profit of and loss – but not the profit enhancement; not the deliverable changes, the service enhancement; bringing the standards up in terms of training, or in terms of educating the team members. I don’t think many owners are involved in these things. That’s the responsibility of the business runners – but if that can be driven up to the business owners – they will definitely see the value in it.

"The old module of business of opening a travel shop and executing business – that will vanish " he added. "It has vanished in so many places in the world, and the same thing might happen in the UAE , Dubai and the GCC – with the advancement of technology and services."

Al Mulla said he hoped that having the backing of travel agency owners on board would also lend a far more powerful voice to the travel agent community when it came to dealing with other industry bodies such as IATA for example.

“Bringing the owners on board will give more value to DTTAG as a group or an association.

"Our objective here with DTTAG is to get our voices raised and bring them to the attention of IATA, government bodies, airlines. That is crucial and to have an owner on top of that – a level higher - the communication level is different. You are going get a lot more positive feedback from an owner than a general manger." 

DTTAG currently has around 65 members among the travel agency community in Dubai. But Al Mulla said his target was to have at least 100 members on board by this time next year.