Travel Village Group to revive adventure and tours offering

The Travel Village Group is set to revive its adventure and tours offering, as the company declares it is “time to get back to normality”.

The agency launched adventure and tours prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, but was then forced to put plans on hold when the pandemic hit.

But in an interview with Travel Weekly at the firm’s annual conference on board MSC Virtuosa, chief executive Phil Nuttall vowed it is time for the company to move past the challenges of the pandemic, and drive business forward by giving its agents scope to offer more holiday types to customers.

More: Travel Village creates support team to help frontline staff

He said: “It’s time for us to bring adventure and tours out of hibernation and revive that section of the business. It’s still early stages but we are really excited about it.”

Managing director John Warr, who was global sales director for touring specialist Wendy Wu from 2o14 to 2021, said Travel Village Group will start training its agents in adventure and tours to grow their confidence as part of the move.

“I’ve had seven years of adventure and tours experience, so I know the business,” he said.

“We are currently missing a big chunk of people who book their ocean and river cruises with us, but then go on and book their tours somewhere else. We need to take advantage of that market as we are barely scraping the surface of it.

“Our next steps are to invest in training our agents in adventure and tours so they build their confidence and are comfortable selling, run a marketing campaign with our existing customers around the new sector, and speak to experts to get some steer on how to maximise our success.”

Director Paula Nuttall said: “There is so much opportunity out there for our agents, who are still firefighting after two years of schedule changes and administrative difficulties.

“It’s time for us to move out of this situation so our sellers can take a breath and start looking for new opportunities.”

She added: “It is time to get back to normality now – we need to after the last two years.”