Gearing up for the comeback
Although Blue-Roads and Topdeck aren’t back on the road quite yet, the travel companies are looking ahead in anticipation of international travel resuming.
Travel Courier caught up with Vicki Ioannou Theophilou, Director Business Development, The Americas, to talk booking trends, when and where their guests are looking to travel and much more.
The last year has been challenging. How has Blue-Roads and Topdeck adapted to meet the needs of post-pandemic travel?
It certainly has been a challenging year. We’ve been regularly speaking to our customers around the globe since the pandemic hit to understand how their needs and wants for travel were changing.
The two most consistent pieces of feedback were that customers were looking for increased booking flexibility — created by the uncertainty of the travel restrictions — to ensure they weren’t out of pocket if things changed, and enhanced health & wellbeing protocols to ensure they were kept safe. We quickly sprung into action introducing our COVID-19 Assurance Policy, (Blue-Roads here, Topdeck here) to give customers peace of mind and security when booking for 2021, or now into 2022.
Whilst we’re not yet back on the road just yet, we’ve put enhanced health and wellbeing policies in place for when we are, covering us and the suppliers we use such as hotels and experiences, and have been awarded the World Travel & Tourism council Safe Travels stamp. So our customers can be certain we’ll be doing everything we can to help keep them safe along with ensuring they have a great experience.
Our team continues to expand to support our growing customer base and geographic reach. Sales and operations have now expanded to western US and also north into Canada. We now have over 65 employees to serve the growing numbers of owners and aircraft in our family.
Vicki Ioannou Theophilou
In a recent survey of mature North American travellers, Blue-Roads found that 85% are planning to travel to Europe for their next international holiday. Can you tell us more about the results and what are the most in-demand countries for future travel?
Europe is always a very popular continent to visit, and we have a lot of tours on offer depending where customers want to go, or what they want to see. There are some differences between our customer bases/brands, our Blue-Roads customers like to discover one region of a country or a small country in depth, and fully immerse themselves in it. Whilst our Topdeck customers generally prefer a faster paced tour, and like to see as much as they can on their vacation. The pandemic doesn’t seem to have affected people’s desire of where they’d like to travel to – our most popular destinations and tours remain the same.
Blue-Roads: Most in demand destinations are: England, Scotland, France and Republic of Ireland. We’ve also seen an increased interest in Morocco and our Majestic Morocco tour.
Topdeck: Italy, Greece, UK, Switzerland and France are the most popular destinations.
Europe is seen as one of the safest places to travel to again when restrictions are lifted, with many of our customers indicating they are still planning to travel this year – as soon as restrictions are lifted and it’s safe to do so.
Looking ahead to 2022/23, are there any other interesting trends or booking patterns you are noticing?
The current travel restrictions have created a lot of pent up demand, whilst customers may be a bit more cautious when they next travel, the wanderlust has definitely not gone away. We’re seeing more customers enquiring about longer trip duration and more customers looking combine tours – making up for lost time on their next vacation!
For our Blue-Roads customers who have decided not to travel this year, they’re looking to get their 2022/23 vacation booked in early so they have something to look forward to. When asked, 15% said the pandemic had made them more likely to take a Group Tour now, with the main reasons being increased safety and having a tour leader looking out for their wellbeing, and knowing that accommodation had been vetted in advance.
For Topdeck customers, they’re ready to go at the drop of a hat – as soon as possible. 83% indicated they are still hoping to take an international vacation this year.
What’s something you think people may not know about Blue-Roads and Topdeck?
Blue-Roads. One of our popular tour leaders, Chris Reid, worked as a Diplomatic Protection Officer in a previous life, and was regularly assigned to working with the Royal Family. Chris is one of the tour leaders on our Wonder of Wales tour, and often shares fond memories and stories of his time serving the Royal Family to our guests.
Topdeck was founded by the CEO of Flight Centre Travel Group, Graham ‘Skroo’ Turner. In 1978, Skroo and his friends bought a double-decker bus in London, rallied a group of like-minded travellers and drove across Europe to Morocco. And so Topdeck was born.
Is there anything you want to share with travel agents?
We’ve seen in the UK, that when the Government announces when travel can resume, bookings go through the roof and prices are likely increase based on the demand. So it’s well worth encouraging your customers to secure their vacation sooner rather than later, as long as there are solid flexibility policies in place, the customer can secure a great deal now, with peace of mind they can make changes if required.
There is a lot of pent-up demand for travel. Where’s the next place you would like to go and why?
After not travelling over this past year, the next trip I would like to take would be to go visit the island of Sicily. We have a great tour with Blue-Roads of the island of Sicily showing all its beautiful history and landscape.
