Agency owner urges agents to go the extra mile to secure bookings

New agency owner Sophie Davis has urged agents to go the extra mile to convert more sales – even if it means feeding a client’s cat.

Davis said her agency Travel Safe Horbury, which opened three months ago in the West Yorkshire town, has delivered boarding passes to clients’ homes and fed a family’s pet in recent weeks, all to secure sales and encourage repeat business.

She stressed it was important for agents to be humble rather than expect people to book with them.

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“I don’t take this job for granted,” she said. “There is no entitlement to business; there are very few holidays that people cannot book themselves.”

Davis gave a family who recently booked a holiday to Lanzarote the option of a 10-day break rather than seven nights for £100 extra, but the clients were unsure as they had no one to feed their cat Percy for the extra time they would be away.

“They said, ‘What about the cat?’,” recalled Davis. “So I said I would feed him for them. Their house was walking distance from the office and I could go at lunchtime.”

She added: “The family has had a horrible few years and every holiday had gone wrong so I didn’t want to let them go away without booking them a holiday.”

Davis, who also organised for flowers to be in the family’s hotel room, admitted she wasn’t a ‘cat person’ but stressed: “If it means someone will come to us rather than book elsewhere, you do it.”

Other ‘extras’ have included taking elderly clients to their cruise coach transfer at a motorway service station because they didn’t drive and were nervous about getting a taxi early in the morning. “We even provided snacks for the drive,” she said.

Davis also stressed the importance of being honest with customers. When a group of 12 recently asked her to beat a quote for the Costa del Sol, she had to turn down the sale. “We couldn’t justify making a booking at a loss,” she said.

Travel Safe Horbury is part of Travel Safe, the predominantly homeworking-based group set up last year.