MTA – Mobile Travel Agents CEO Don Beattie is an easy interview. Query him on MTA or the travel agency sector and he’ll go on and on (in a good way, of course).
A big part of Mobile Travel Agents’ success simply comes down to the flexibility it offers its members.
“We want everybody that we come in contact with to feel what MTA is. We don’t restrict anybody from doing anything,” Beattie tells Karryon in an interview.
“I think one thing that MTA does exceptionally is that we manage what we call ‘stage in life’. During life, there are births, deaths and marriages and everything in between. So sometimes business is not the most important thing in life. Our model supports that completely. I think it ties people to us.”
That commitment to providing an environment in which a healthy work-life balance can thrive mightn’t come as a shock to those who know the origin of Mobile Travel Agents.
Family-focused foundation
“So Karen and Roy Merrick started MTA 24 years ago. They are phenomenal. Karen started this business to predominantly give women who had children the opportunity to own their own business and come back into travel… and she’s carried that philosophy through all the way,” Beattie explains.
“MTA is heavily family-focused. But that does not mean that we’re not professional in what we do.”
This balance essentially means members can work at their own pace, and adapt the business model to suit their particular needs.
“We can’t magically aim at a target and hit it,” Beattie says.
“We want to support our advisors to grow their business at the speed and to the level they want. There are no sales targets in MTA. There are no sales targets for our staff in relation to recruiting at all.
“We want the focus to be on the people, not on the target. And does it work for us? I think we’re doing well.”
Record revenue
That’s putting it mildly. At the time of the interview, FY24 was on target to smash any previous year in terms of overall revenue for the group.
“We had a record year last year and this year is even higher than last year,” the Mobile Travel Agents boss says.
“This is the best time in recent years for people [in travel] to have a really good chance of being successful. And if you’re not busy at this point in time, I think you’d really have to investigate your way of operating.”
Overall, Beattie expects growth to continue for the group in the next few years.
“I think it might not be as high a percentage of growth but it will absolutely grow. Of course, the larger the growth is, even in percentage terms, the larger dollar returns there are. So two per cent growth of $100 million is different from 10 per cent growth of $10. So you’re going to see massive returns still,” he says.
“I think for the expert travel advisors, it’s almost got to the stage at this point in time, that there’s more custom than there is the ability to service that custom.”
And that’s the opposite of where the industry was during the pandemic.
“So it’s a wonderful place to be, but it’s created an opposite stress of the work-life balance. So COVID probably drove us more towards the leisure side of things. And now we’re at the exact opposite end of that pendulum where we’re at capacity. And now we have to almost get to the stage of saying, do I need to choose the customers with whom I wish to work? It’s a beautiful place to be.”
Room for everyone
It’s perhaps because of this, that Beattie says he isn’t concerned by the growth in competitiveness of the travel agency sector: from physical stores to online travel agents and indeed home-based advisors.
“There is room for everybody. I think what will happen is the slices of the pie are just going to change,” he remarks.
“I think what we see is somewhat of a shrinking of the shopfront retail and an explosion of perhaps the mobile style.
“Now, if an MTA member wanted to open a shopfront, they could, nothing is stopping them. What we would say is, you’re now introducing a new level of cost to your business.”
Beattie states that MTA doesn’t specifically aim to be the biggest mobile/home-based agency group, but its membership has risen to a robust 450 agents or so. And within the membership base, “the spectrum is massive”. While the group normally only welcomes travel advisors with a minimum of five years of face-to-face consulting experience, he still calls Mobile Travel Agents “a bit of a melting pot”.
“We get people coming from all walks of life. In the sense of travel life. And they have different attributes. And I think the hardest thing when they come into our environment is their choice… they have choice,” he notes.
“We do not dictate what they must sell. The decision is made by the advisor and the customer. Our preferred partners are there because they’re great supporters.
“We don’t force targets… we don’t force product to targets. And for some people who have lived in a very constrained environment, having choice becomes difficult.”
‘Hobbyists’ to heroes
Mobile Travel Agents’ current success is a long way from its tough beginnings though.
“So when we first started 24 years ago, we were scorned… ‘hobbyists’, was I think the most common term… ‘part-timers’,” Beattie says.
“So I did a presentation to a large supplier group… and I brought in this slide and the second slide was a woman in a pink dressing gown, hair in curls, cigarette hanging out her mouth, toes parted with cotton – I said this is how you picture us. On the next slide, I told them what the average commission earned was by these people, and all of a sudden, I had 40 people listening to me intently. So the perception did not match the reality.”
Indeed, the industry and consumers are listening now.
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