Rules and regulations
Al Mulla’s ambitions do not stop at the company owners. His next project is to get government bodies — including the Dubai Civil Aviation, DTCM, and Ministry of Economy —involved in with DTTAG in a bid to regulate the industry.
“They are going to be the regulatory bodies that will drive the rules and regulations of the travel industry. We need to bring them in line with us and get their buy-in to be part of DTTAG, sitting in at a higher level.”
All Mulla wants IATA to get involved, “so it’s a triangle we are trying to create between the government, the processers which are IATA and the travel industry.”
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He explains that increased regulation of the travel trade is absolutely vital, both for the protection of travel agents as well as for the protection the consumer.
“This regulatory body is required to protect customers from fraud or mishandling and to ensure there is a standardised way of doing things, for example service charges.”
Regulating service charges will help profitability as every agency will charge the correct fee, but it will also ensure “transparency and customer rights” as “people would know what they were paying for” says Al Mulla.
Raising the game
Al Mulla acknowledges the biggest challenge will be raising standards, in an industry notorious for “doing it for less”, and seeing service levels suffer because of that.
“You don’t see consistant service levels here. It depends on the location, the business and type of customer the agency has. Some might not need service — that’s the nature of business in this type of the world. 75% is point to point.”
Al Mulla says he wants to every agency in Dubai to offer nothing less than “85%” level of service; which makes you wonder what customers are experiencing now?
“That’s difficult to say. Some might be exceeding 90% and some might be at a level of just 50% or 60%”
The only way for the entire sector to up its game is more investment in training.
It’s an initiative DTTAG has been tirelessly pushing through its free courses for members; and it’s something Al Mulla says he will staunchly continue to support.
“I’m always repeating training, training, training. It’s about educating people in this business which is desperately required because the business is ever changing.” training the trade.
Ultimately Al Mulla wants to see a travel consultant qualification become mandatory for those in the industry; and in the future a travel academy to be established in Dubai.
“If you want to enhance standards definitely a qualification is part of this. For me a travel consultant is a very professional job equal to any other — nurses, doctors, engineers, or other industries.
“That’s the sort of a qualification that is needed. In Dubai travel and tourism is our future, and there are no mandatory standards for consultants or even managers here. Maybe the bigger picture will drive us to have a school — who knows?”
Future thoughts
“What I foresee for DTTAG is that it should be a community of travel agents. I’d like to see it as a proper association where we’ve got a lot of activities. Where it’s not just a relationship between the office, the executive committee members and the agents.
“It’s very important to get people together,” he adds. “I have attended general body meetings where the smaller agencies were so motivated when they were around the rest of the community.
“We really need to drive that because it will bring people to a level of understanding. Smaller agencies might feel their contribution is not important. But that is not the case.”
In the past DTTAG has failed to galvanise support from Dubai’s travel trade community because initiatives have floundered or failed to materialise; but Al Mulla is optimistic that a fresh wave of thinking will encourage the industry to get involved for the greater good this time.
“Historically there have been initiatives that have not been successful so people think, this has not worked 10 years ago why should it work now?
“But what I see is that if the strength is not there and the unity and the understanding is not there, then individually one after the other we will vanish. Look at any other industry — there is common understanding, there is unity in terms of driving it forward.
“We need to learn from each other. If that does not happen, we lose. Creating that unity for this industry is going to be difficult providing the will is not there. But now I have this feeling that people might want to buy-in this time. We are quite optimistic that people will change their stripes.”
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