AAT Kings renews trade ties

AAT Kings renews trade ties
By admin


AAT Kings has renewed its focus on the trade with managing director, Anthony Hayes, working to strengthen relationships with the promise of "great opportunities' on the horizon as the dollar dips. 

Hayes, who took up his position in February, said his first five months at the helm had been spent "rebuilding' relationships with some of the bigger players in the travel industry that had been neglected in recent years.

"The last few years have been very focused on building direct business, and of course you should do that, but I can't see why you would do that at the expense of doing as much with the trade as possible and making sure they love us,' he told Travel Today.

Fortunately for Hayes, those partners have been receptive, helped by the decline of the Australian dollar which is expected to create additional opportunities for both inbound and domestic tourism.

"Those trade partners are quite keen to start planning for the years ahead because its starting to look like we should produce some pretty good numbers from here on in," he said. "There are some great opportunities out there."

Meanwhile, service has been another important focus for Hayes over his first six months in position, with the company staging its first .customer service brainstorming workshop in June in order to take its offering to the "next level".

Although he stressed this was not due to any shortcomings, he underlined the need to continual strive to be better.

For AAT Kings, this now means building its service around the "warmth and friendliness" along with other "cliches" that are associated with Australia, often displayed in tourism marketing around the world.

"We're delivering on the promise so that people get the quintessential holiday when they come," Hayes said. "Do people want to see koalas and kangaroos? Yep, they do."

Delivery of those G'Days and Aussie affability is exactly what AAT Kings does best, he added. 

As a result, the company hopes to see a considerable increase in business from emerging markets such as China over the coming years as they venture to Australia in search of those experience.

And while language services and other ways of tailoring the product to those markets will be a priority, the service will most definitely be Aussie, Hayes promised.

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