Trend on travel

Why it matters that some firms are independentlyp minded

Nick Trend

Does it matter to you who owns and runs your tour operator? Not to many people, I suspect. For most of us the order of priorities is more likely financial security, value for money, decent service, and the necessary expertise to offer a good-quality, imaginative holiday in the first place.

Is a small company run by a committed owner more likely to deliver that than a more corporate set up? Possibly. In my experience, restaurants that are run by a chef who either owns the business or has an interest in it tend to outshine franchises and chains. But let’s face it, there are plenty of terrible places that are run privately, and some branches of bigger chains which are right on the money. The same is true of hotels. Virtually all top-end, five-star set ups these days are run by large corporate groups, and the service and attention to detail they offer can be outstanding.

The reason I am rehearsing these questions is because this week I attended the annual barbecue held by Aito – the Association of Independent Tour Operators. It’s a chance for its members to get their message across to the press, and one of the things conveyed to me was how much you – our readers, and their potential customers – value the concept of independence enshrined in the name of their association.

Ironically, I think the name is misleading. Aito members comprise mostly smaller operators which specialise in particular parts of the world or types of holiday. When it was founded, more than 40 years ago, the association represented what was a group of small ownermanaged operators. Over the years, several key members have been bought by much bigger companies but continue to trade under their original name. This may be despite the fact that the original owners have long retired from the fray.

It’s an inconsistency I have pointed out several times over the years, but which Aito continues to fudge with an arcane definition of “independent” that baulks at ownership by some types of operator yet tolerates private equity financiers and large foreign travel companies.

I should say at this point that Aito does do a lot more than simply market its members and lobby on their behalf. It also ensures that all the holidays they sell are financially protected; it has both a code of conduct and a disputes resolutions service. It also gets involved with promoting more sustainable and ethical tourism.

In short, its members are basically good guys. They don’t have a monopoly on quality, but they are trying to do a decent job and, of course, make a healthy profit. They are not all independent, but I don’t think that really matters. The watchwords advertised on the Aito website – “quality, expertise, protection” – are surely much more important, as long as they are combined with competitive pricing.

How Aito spreads that message is a growing challenge. Time was when they could rely on a strong network of independent travel agents to market their members. But today most people now search for their holidays on Google. Some individual Aito members do well in the results when you search for a type of holiday – art tours or opera holidays, for example. But I gave up looking for the Aito website in the results pages. Which is a shame, because it is actually quite a useful directory for finding holiday ideas and operators with the expertise to deliver them.

You might try it and see what you think: aito.co.uk.