TTC on small group touring

THE Travel Corporation Global CEO Brett Tollman has hit out at “an unfortunate semantic” fixation on what constitutes a small group tour, telling TD “we are an expert and have been focused on small group touring for some time”.

Tollman said the company’s Luxury Gold brand takes 34 people on average, while Insight Vacations takes 33 and Trafalgar and Contiki take 40.

“You can’t make money, I can guarantee you, operating a trip for 10 or 12 people,” he said, adding “and it’s not a great experience for people who are travelling”.

Tollman told Travel Daily a group size of 10 people provided travellers with less chance of making friends and of meeting people from other countries and “the experience just isn’t going to be as good, in our view”.

Tollman said TTC had continued to innovate across its brands, and had been breaking up group sizes on trips for many years.

He highlighted Insight Vacation’s Dine Around program, which sees groups of 40 split off into smaller groups along with the strength of TTC brand’s Net Promoter Scores, with Contiki last year in NZ achieving 92 and Trafalgar in Europe 86.

“We feel very comfortable that 30, 40, or 50 people is a very good number...and we’ll keep working at getting our travel trade partners to embrace that because they certainly have no problem selling a traveller on a 5,000-, 1,000- or 2,000-passenger ocean cruise ships.

“I think it’s the industry internally, it’s the little operators who are trying to make noise, saying a 15 person group is the way to go,” he said.

It’s not the customer saying it and some of the travel trade are getting a little fixated by it.”