Travel firm spreading its wings
Dunedinbased Brooker Travel Group, which is now part of the helloworld brand, is preparing to open an office in Auckland’s CBD. Sally Rae talks to director Andrew Carmody about the growth of the business.
SIX blurry photographs are a reminder of Andrew and Karen Carmody’s random meeting with the
Dalai Lama last year.
The Dunedin travel agents were on holiday in India when they discovered the Tibetan spiritual leader was staying in the same hotel.
The Dalai Lama noted Mrs Carmody’s red hair and asked where she was from. Commenting that she had come a long way, he called the couple over and blessed them.
The moment was captured in six images but the Dalai Lama was held in such awe by the Indian people that the photographer was shaking. Hence the blurred images.
Ask Mr Carmody to number how many countries he has visited during his decades in the tourism industry, and he starts scrawling numbers on a world map on a desk.
When he reaches more than 40, he stops and says that he has missed some, but it could number up to 50.
As far as memorable trips, the Indian holiday — which also included a random invitation to an Indian wedding and seeing tigers in the wild — was ‘‘incredible’’.
But then he always liked visiting new places, so it made it hard for him to choose a favourite destination.
Andrew Carmody bought into Brooker Travel Group, which is now part of the helloworld travel brand, in 1988, buying out founder
Bruce Brooker in 1991.
He had originally started working in his father’s travel agency Carmody Travel in Mosgiel before moving to work for city agencies.
When the Carmodys joined the business, the decision was made early on to enter the corporate market.
Retail travel was a ‘‘lot more open to swings in the marketplace’’ and Mr Carmody cited the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 where retail travel ‘‘buttoned back’’.
In the mid1990s, David Smith joined the company as a director and it resulted in a shift to the current premises in George St.
In 2003, Brooker Travel bought a travel business in Wellington’s CBD, the idea being that business was not level across the entire country.
Their philosophy was ‘‘if you broaden your footprint, you inoculate yourself against any regional variations’’, Mr Carmody said.
The Dunedin office was also predominantly corporate so Wellington provided a good level of retail business.
In 2009, an office was opened in Arrowtown which has since moved to the Five Mile development in Frankton.
In 2016, another office was bought in Wellington and the two offices were merged, doubling the size of the business.
In November last year, the company opened its second office in Wellington, in Kilbirnie, to complement its Featherston St CBD office.
In a couple of weeks, it will open a ‘‘flagship’’ helloworld office in the Auckland CBD — in Chorus House, in Wyndham St — which will trial new technology and layouts for future helloworld businesses.
Auckland was a big market and helloworld did not have a CBD location, so a gap was seen. The other attraction for the Carmodys and Mr Smith was the opportunity to trial the new technology.
Now in four of the five main centres, their ambition was likely to fill that gap and go ‘‘fully national’’.
‘‘If you stop, you tend to stagnate,’’ Mr Carmody said.
When Mr Carmody first bought into Brookers, there were 26 travel agents in Dunedin. Brookers itself employed 18 or 19 staff in the office. Now there were fewer staff, with 12 in the office, yet turnover was five times the size. ‘‘That’s the efficiencies of the industry,’’ he said.
The majority of travel agents in New Zealand remained mainly family businesses with three or four staff, but they had always wanted to be more than that, he said.
Asked the secret to its success, Mr Carmody said it was simple — ‘‘if you don’t run a good business, you don’t get clients’’. They had also been prepared to take risks.
When Mr Carmody first started in the industry, it was noncomputerised. Sorting an itinerary for a roundtheworld trip involved ringing every airline to see if seats were available.
It might take three or four days to plan and book and itinerary which then had to be typed up and then proofread, before being posted to the client. So the client might have waited a week, whereas the turnaround now was very quick.
Computerisation hit the travel industry very early and, when it came to the arrival of the internet, Mr Carmody said it had ‘‘allowed us to be better’’.
‘‘It has opened up opportunities for a broader range of not only products to sell the client but to fulfil what clients want out of a trip.’’
In years gone by, if a customer was heading to Milan and wanted to go to the opera at La Scala, then a letter would have to be written to the opera house. Now, an agent could quickly and easily look up the programme.
When it came to the effect of online bookings, Mr Carmody said for someone who wanted to ‘‘go and visit Mum in Wellington’’ he could not add any value to that single transaction.
But if it was a corporate body buying travel in volume to send people to Wellington, or anyone booking anything with two to three components of travel and going further than a couple of hours flying, then it was ‘‘madness’’ to buy through the internet.
When it came to future travel trends, Mr Carmody predicted the next ‘‘in’’ place would be Poland. ‘‘Don’t ask me to justify that, it’s a gut call,’’ he said.
A large number of the business’ staff had been there a long time which meant it hopefully provided a good work environment, but also meant clients were dealing with people with experience.
‘‘Even clients that think they know what they want don’t necessarily know what they want,’’ he said.
But the majority of people who came in wanted to travel and wanted to be there and were generally excited about their travel plans. Repeat customers were a ‘‘massive’’ part of their business.
As an associate of APX business travel, it also offered Allof Government corporate services to Government entities.
Mr Smith managed an important sector of the company, specialising in school and sporting groups. He organised cultural, historical and sporting tours tailored for school groups and it was a huge growth sector of the business, Mr Carmody said.
This week, he was in Auckland seeing off a group of 180 basketballers heading to Australia.
The Dunedin office was now managed by Mr and Mrs Carmody’s son Drew, who established the former Arrowtown office — now managed in Queenstown by Rebekah Hensman — before moving back to Dunedin three years ago.
Kim Grafton, helloworld general manager, said Brooker Travel Group had been an integral part of the success of the helloworld branded network since its inception in February 2016.
‘‘It is both exciting and a privilege to watch Andrew, Karen and David take this madeinDunedin, bestpractice agency nationwide.’’