The Advantage Travel Partnership, Britain’s largest consortium of independent travel agents, launches its three-year strategy with an emphasis on growth, collaboration and digital transformation.

After a challenging 22 months for the travel industry, The Advantage Travel Partnership has streamlined the business to align its operations internally ensuring that business and leisure travel divisions maximise opportunities to collaborate on communications, events and buying power to bring greater benefit and value to members. The strategy is underpinned by four pillars designed to forge growth for the consortium and for members alike.

Pillar 1: Footprint Expansion will ensure existing members receive greater support through consultancy products and marketing and technology solutions. The Consortium also has ambitious targets to grow it network and attract new members. Pillar 2:  Product & Portfolio Capitalisation promises to leverage more buying power on behalf of members. Pillar 3: Digital Transformation will further the organisations commitment to fully digitise all stakeholder touchpoints and promote enhanced capabilities for data collection and analysis. And Pillar 4: Operational Excellence involves a holistic technology review and makeover of the Advantage public and internal digital platforms.

Julia Lo Bue-Said, CEO The Advantage Travel Partnership said: “We’ve learned some hard lessons during the pandemic, and we’ve had to be honest with ourselves to identify areas in the business where we can fundamentally add more value to our members and support them through what will be a tough period of recovery. This has resulted in streamlining our services, consolidating our expertise, and ultimately working smarter in a market that will be tough for years for come.

Lo Bue-Said goes onto say: “This framework which will take the business forwards is ambitious and one I hope will further support Advantage as the consortium of choice for current members as well as future members. Continuing to be the voice of the independent agent both for business and leisure travel is now part of our DNA and we will continue to fight for the industry and strive for a trading arena conducive to sustainable growth.”

As part of the new strategic approach, the Advantage Travel Partnership has moved to a hybrid working environment for all head office-based staff embracing a healthier work life balance for employees.  The former offices are still owned by the organisation and rental from the property will be ploughed into the business as a revenue stream.