CA TO’S future vision

By Steve Jones

It’s not often you hear a of a trade association vocally discouraging membership growth. But on taking the reins at the Council of Australian Tour Operators a little under 18 months ago, Dennis Bunnik did just that. “If you’re a member of an industry association, that association has to provide value. If it doesn’t there is really no purpose to it,” he observed, before voicing his unconventional views on recruitment. “I said to tour operators who were not members of CATO that I did not want you to join until we give you a reason to join.” For years, CATO had operated in the manner of a social club where industry players gathered for a beer and an informal natter. Convivial as it was, and it certainly wasn’t without merit, it lacked a meaningful vision or clear agenda. Together with the committee and CATO’S stalwart general manager Peter Baily, Bunnik set out to address those issues and drew up a three year strategic plan to bring professionalism and a sense of purpose to the organisation. Now entering its second year, Bunnik told travelbulletin the plan was beginning to take effect, but stressed it remained a “work in progress”. “Those comments about not joining before we gave them a reason were made just after I became chairman and we were still going through the strategic planning process,” Bunnik told travelbulletin. “Once we launched the new strategic plan it was important that we demonstrate our commitment to implementing it rather than starting with a recruitment drive. “Our focus has therefore been on providing value to existing members rather than creating recruitment collateral.” The most recent initiative designed to provide value has seen the long overdue development of a new website. Hardly groundbreaking in an increasingly sophisticated digital age, you may think. But it represented a major step forward for CATO. The site will deliver detailed information on each member, providing agents with a product reference point for the first time, and giving operators greater exposure to their areas of product speciality. “We want to move closer to the retail travel network and that involves providing easy access for agents to CATO members and giving members the ability to promote their product to the retail networks,” Bunnik said. “The website is the biggest development in that respect. Until now, there has not been a single source of knowledge, or database that consultants can refer to.” So if forging closer links with consultants is a key ambition, why not create a new class of membership within CATO for agents in the same way it has done for tourism bodies? Furthermore, is there an argument to suggest CATO could replicate the UK’S Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO) and establish a network of agents who specialise in selling CATO product? In AITO’S case, it developed AITO Specialist Travel Agents, with turnover now approaching £60m (A$97m). Bunnik dismissed any prospect of creating a parallel agency network in the AITO mould, arguing the structure of the market in Australia does not lend itself to such a model. AITO and its agency arm were designed to combat the dominance of the vertically integrated giants – originally Thomson, Airtours, First Choice and Thomas Cook before they consolidated to two superheavyweights in Tui and Thomas Cook - which controlled distribution and prevented independent wholesalers and operators from getting a look in. Flight Centre aside, Australia’s networks and franchises are largely a collection of independent agents which CATO members have open access to, Bunnik said. “The retail consortiums negotiate preferred supplier deals with tour operators but as their travel agency members are independently owned they have the freedom to deal directly with non-preferred tour operators in line with their individual customer needs,” Bunnik said. “It would potentially help a very small number of CATO members [if we created an agency arm] but it would duplicate what is already in place.” The potential for inviting select travel agents to become affiliate members of CATO was more of a possibility, he suggested, but far from a priority. “It’s probably something we could have a closer look at.” Along with the newly-launched website, two other objectives of CATO’S strategic blueprint have been to educate members and to “engage” them. While guest speakers have addressed CATO meetings on specific issues in the past, more structured forums are now taking place, and open for travel agents to attend. The first, on crisis management, was held earlier this year with a focus on legal services

We need to identify what the broader issues are for our members, where the common links are and how as an association we things’ can help fix those