Sunday Nov 24, 2024
Sunday Nov 24, 2024
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Nisha Barkathunnisha
By Kiyoshi J Berman The iconic city State Singapore’s success in tourism is well-documented and widely-used as a benchmark. Many Sri Lankans have personally experienced brand Singapore or have transited via its huge airport Changi. Singapore last year attracted over 15 million tourists and earned Singapore $ 24 billion (Rs. 2.4 trillion) from tourism and related activities.
Asian Millennial Travellers (AMTs)
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Leading figures of Sri Lanka’s tourism industry as well as professionals last week were spellbound by what and how Singapore did to be what it is today, thanks to a thought-provoking and absorbing presentation by tourism expert Nisha Barkathunnisha via an initiative championed by the Daily FT and Viluxur Holidays.
Several likeminded parties such as Reefs Edge, Harpo’s Cafés and Restaurants, Hilton Colombo Residences, BBDO and Event Productions supported this pro bono initiative in the larger interest of shaping a better future for tourism and the people of Sri Lanka.
Nisha’s presentation focussed on the recent performance of Singapore tourism, the quality tourism approaches and strategies, high yield driven marketing approach, enhancing destination attractiveness and supporting industry competitiveness.
Following are excerpts from Nisha’s presentation which was well received by the audience, so much so there were spontaneous expressions of interest to fund her as a consultant to realise or crystallise some of the future plans of Sri Lanka Tourism, which is targeting 2.6 million tourists in a few years’ time.
It’s a great pleasure being in this beautiful country. I’ve been coming here for the last 18 years as a tourism practitioner and several times in the recent years and I’ve been experiencing huge change in Sri Lanka’s tourism landscape. I’m very happy to be here to contribute as much as I can and share a little bit of my experience in Singapore as a tourist destination.
I understand that in this room there are a lot of hoteliers, travel intermediaries, corporations, and investors. It’s wonderful to see you and I think this is an exemplification of the commitment of the Sri Lankan industry to unlock the potential and to prepare the industry towards the 2016 goals. Are you ready to be unlocked, ladies and gentlemen?
I see myself as a facilitator over here. As someone in the tourism industry in Singapore, I want to facilitate an evening where we share how creative Sri Lanka’s tourism industry can be in achieving the 2016 goals. I’m trying to facilitate how the industry can charge a new direction; we have a lot of questions coming up, a lot of ideas, creative thinking that could be initiated.
I hope to encourage Sri Lanka’s tourism industry to see how much more your country can do in terms of development goals.
The tourism goal in Singapore at the moment is in terms of quality tourism approaches. It is similar in terms of Sri Lanka’s plan in moving towards tourism development as well. I would also like to touch on how Singapore, not through accident, but by clever strategic planning, moved towards high yield marketing approaches, which I guess Sri Lanka is also looking at in terms of high yield marketing approaches for Sri Lanka.
Singapore has emerged as a tourism capital in Asia in terms of its attractiveness, despite being a very small country which fails in terms of resources in Sri Lanka. But we’re still a very attractive tourism capital in Asia. It was not accidental but a lot of strategic planning by our Tourism Board. Singapore is also focussed on capacity building to ensure that our people have the capacity to serve.
Singapore has got very small population in compared to Sri Lanka. We only have close to five million people; 60% Singaporeans and 40% non Singaporeans. Having a very small work force, we have actually managed to bring in a work force that is highly-professional. When it comes to the MICE industry, we were rated as the top three country and top three city and that was feasible primarily because of the capacity of our tourism professionals in Singapore.
Tourism development in Singapore
Megatrends that influence tourism development in Singapore are economic, political, social, environmental and technological. These in turn lead to tourist values and needs and corresponding new product developments. Singapore’s challenge has been increasing the inflow of discerning travellers amidst intensifying competition from the region, the country’s own slower workforce limitations and increasing the impact of visitor on local population.
Despite these challenges, Singapore in the last 30 years has tried to elevate the tourism industry in reaching our goals primarily because of our challenging environments and mega trends that shaped us into thinking about where exactly we should be putting our dollars in marketing in terms of market segments. We have thought very clearly and tried to understand our tourist market segments in different parts of the world and their needs.
Primarily I think the interest of many of you over here is the China market. So we have put our dollars in the China market in trying to understand the psyche of the Chinese traveller and why they want to choose Singapore as a tourist destination; when the whole world is out there for them, why they think Singapore is so important and they want to be there.
The other thing we are looking at is new product development. As a small country, we have to persistently challenge ourselves to look at what new products we have to come up with and it’s not just about products but it’s about innovative experiences. Think about a country which has scarcity of land; it is very difficult for us to keep building and building.
In today’s travellers’ mindset, it’s not about the destination but it’s about the experiences. They choose the experience first and then they look at which destination they want to come to. We have got it quite correctly in terms of what experiences people want and in their map Singapore should be the first destination that comes to mind when they think about experiences. That’s really about the unique experiences. And in terms of marketing campaign, we came up with this thing called ‘Uniquely Singapore’.
Sri Lanka’s challenges are also similar to Singapore’s. Number one is attracting the right and modern traveller, who is very discerning. Today we have the very dynamic traveller who knows exactly at his fingertips what he wants and has all the information about a destination before he searches in terms of a destination in travel decision. So to get into that traveller’s mindset, we have to understand what he or she really wants.
Secondly, it’s about competition. I’m sure you’re facing a lot of competition Sri Lanka, compared to the rest of the region. If you look at Singapore, we have a lot of competition from Malaysia, which offers a lot of diversity in tourism products and pricing wise is so much more affordable and value-driven.
We have Indonesia which is so large and the products are amazing and Thailand which is also one of our strong competitors. Despite challenges, today Singapore is rated very highly in the mindset of the tourists we have been reaching out to. It has a lot to do with our marketing strategy and our tourism development.
Regarding the strong work force, I have been speaking to quite a number of tourism professionals here in Sri Lanka; it’s the same problem I’m hearing. Sri Lanka too doesn’t have enough people to serve the tourism industry; the fortification of the tourism professionals and capacity building needs obviously is not fit.
It’s not a problem unique to Sri Lanka itself; it is a problem we are facing in Singapore as well. We have got policies in place, lots of favourable strategies in place that are uplifting our industry to point that I would say most people think that being a tourism professional is a prestigious job and is a status-driven job. I’m part of the industry and I hope many of our young people even in Sri Lanka feel that this is an industry that they want to go in to.
Singapore tourism is also endeavouring to have a positive impact on the community and people. We are placing a lot of emphasis on the resident population of Singapore, that community must be involved in the delivery of tourism. If the community is not committed to developing the industry, it is very difficult for the tourism board alone or the tourism players to propel the industry forward. So there is a lot of engagement amongst the local community and that again is the policies and strategies we have to solicit as much feedback, as much ideas as we can, to bring forward the communities, to say we want it be part and parcel of the tourism industry.
We also realised that the locals feel that they are brand ambassadors for the country; especially for visiting friends and relatives, that it is very easy for us to move the brand of Singapore forward. So overall despite the challenges the tourism industry has been moving positively in Singapore.
Somebody was saying to me that 15 million tourists are mass tourism numbers. This is true, but what we’re looking at, at the moment, is not numbers; we are looking at 30 billion dollars. Now we have a different objective, it’s not the numbers game we’re in at the moment; we are looking at how to improve the yield that we’re getting from the travellers.
In Singapore the average number of nights a visitor spends is 2.58 and that’s very short. So to get them to raise it from 2.58 to three days or four days has been a challenge to us. We have discovered what our weaknesses are and we want to make sure while they are there for three days, make sure that a traveller spends in terms of being high yield traveller. So it’s not about the bed nights, it not about the volume, it’s about how much a traveller spends when they come to your country. Malaysia gets close to 24 million tourists and we have only about 15 million tourists. However, an average tourist in Singapore spends three times more money than in Malaysia. So there must be something right about what we’re doing. Malaysia is also moving towards this. So more than mere numbers, one needs to look at the value per traveller.
Cheap versus expensive destinations
I was recently in Bhutan, on marketing consultancy work. It’s a highly sustainable country and Bhutan is a country that has a tariff of 250 dollars per day and they were very worried about being a very expensive destination. And here we’re looking at how it doesn’t matter if you’re an expensive destination, it doesn’t matter in terms of how long people stay, but how we get then to spend as much as possible in the experiences they have to offer.
This is the other challenge of the countries that are moving towards sustainability and environment. In Singapore, the average room rate is 261 dollars, which is pretty high. But yet we don’t feel uncomfortable about selling at that price. If you look at Marina Bay Sands, which is one of the big hotels in Singapore, it has an average of US$ 385 per night and it is always 100% full daily.
Some people say that Sri Lanka is an expensive destination. To me, it’s not about the expensive products but it’s about the experience you’re able to sell to your traveller and let them be convinced that this is the destination they want to be in. Somebody was asking me if people will part with the money that we’re charging them. My answer is that this is paradise on earth you know; many people have actually called Sri Lanka paradise on earth and you don’t put a low value to paradise, do you?
If you believe in what Sri Lanka can offer, then I don’t think we have worry too much about the price factor. It is a jewel, you want to call it a jewel and nobody wants a low price for a jewel. It’s about the industry believing that this country has so much of value to offer to the visitor; having the right strategies in place to make people understand that this is the destination that is able to provide the value.
Let’s see how Singapore has done that. Singapore is targeting and we place our bets on the right market. The top three markets we are looking at are China, which is very important market to all of us, followed by India and Indonesia. We had the foresight long time ago that these are the three markets that we are going to invest in. We have put our dollars in the right market and with the proximity of Australia because we are an airport hub, Australia becomes a very important market to us. Japan is still a very important as it is a high yield market.
I think all of us are very lucky to be in Asia at the moment because it is the only region that is experiencing the biggest boom. Singapore has scaled down on its international offices in the US and in Europe and we have moved all our representative offices in the Asia Pacific. We have increased the numbers of agencies in China, India and Indonesia. Statistically speaking China is experiencing a huge growth of 8% of yearly growth and 7% in India. We are targeting more marketing campaigns in these two destinations.
Quality tourism and first impressions
We have looked at three pillars of quality tourism. To make it quality tourism, we have to make sure that everyone, every stakeholder in Singapore, understands that tourism in an important economic driver. As much as we’re doing publicity and PR outside Singapore, we’re also doing a lot of publicity and PR within Singapore to make our population, our community, understand.
The guy who picks you up at the airport, the taxi driver has to understand that. Because the first things that you see when you leave the airport and the first moment of truth you call it, the first touch point, is your taxi driver. Your taxi driver better be in a position to make that traveller coming into your country feel welcomed. The taxi driver has to understand that tourism is so import to the country and without him as an ambassador, Singapore’s tourism industry is going to suffer. We do a lot of training for the taxi drivers in Singapore to bring about that understanding.
Another group of people who need to understand about tourism is our Immigration people. They are the first touch point again when a traveller comes and enters the airport, what your country stands for is your Immigration Department. So it has been an important economic driver and some kind of publicity has to be done to make the local people understand that tourism is important to everyone.
The next thing is that we also want to ensure, considering we have a very small work force, is that our tourism industry is creating quality jobs for the people of Singapore. So is it going to be innovative so much so that we’re competing with other industries in Singapore? We have several high growth industries such as banking and shipping, but tourism is the preferred employer. If this is not so, a lot of young people won’t be graduating from tourism and hospitality. I think the tourism industry needs to also have that understanding that we want to be the preferred employer of graduates or diploma holders. So we’re doing a lot to create a publicity image of the tourism industry.
Because Singapore can’t keep on building, we’re trying to use the existing resources in our country. We’re moving a little bit towards our heritage and cultural tourism. We have a very short history so now we’re looking at a very urban, contemporary Singapore. We are looking at rural tourism. Many of you have been to Singapore; you can understand what I’m saying. When our urban city is getting so modern, we’re looking towards the country side and rural areas to see if that also can be a part of tourism. We are using that as a strategy that we have people coming in to stay three days in Singapore, we can let them go to the peripheral areas and stay a few more days. For that engagement, the local communities from highlands and the rural country sides are being harnessed to play a key role in tourism.
When I looked at Sri Lanka’s tourism development plan, I realised the country is not so different from Singapore as well. The first approach that Singapore has been doing over the last three to five years is pursuing a yield-driven marketing approach, so again we’re not looking at the numbers game. We are no longer interested in increasing 15 million to 17 million, which is not so difficult. What we want to do is to increase the 23 billion dollars to 30 billion dollars. Now that is a challenge for Singapore. How do we bring the tourism yield to 30 billion dollars?
The first one is we want to move towards a high yield driven approach and number two to make our destination as attractive as possible so that people would want to come to Singapore. Once upon a time Singapore used to be a part of a tourism circuit, meaning tourists come to Singapore for 2.5 days, and they move to Malaysia for 10 days and then go to Thailand for 14 days. But today we want people to come to Singapore and see it as a single destination so they would come and spend all the money possible in just one country and that’s it. Sports and related events also help market destination as vibrant.
With regard to the destination’s attractiveness, we are putting all our attention on industry competitiveness. If we want to retain the position of Singapore being the MICE city of Asia or rather the world, because we’re now number two as a city and number three as a country in the whole world, for us to be able to retain that position is not going to be easy because Shanghai is fighting back-to-back with us as well as Hong Kong and Bangkok. Our objective is not to be the third best country in the world but to be the first country in the world for MICE. Not the second best city in the world but to become the first best city in the world when it comes to MICE. We are aligning our policies and strategies to achieve these goals.
I looked at Sri Lanka Tourism’s plan. I think you have got your priorities pretty right and you’re looking at high yield tourism, the right market segment.
Any expert from any country who has actually developed tourism would suggest Sri Lanka doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel because many of us have got tried and tested methods, and we’re ready to share them. It’s time for Sri Lanka to look at how best to learn from these countries in terms of what they have developed and try to adapt it to the Sri Lankan tourism industry. The whole industry should be looking at it in terms of coming up with innovative product development, moving away from traditional boundaries.
I have been working with the Sri Lankan tourism industry for the past two decades; 18 years ago I wanted to sell Sri Lanka to Singapore tourists and I was looking at Sri Lanka travel itineraries. Even last month I requested a few itineraries from organisations and I’m still seeing the same itineraries. So how do we become different? How do we sell different itineraries? I tried to check and I looked at different company websites. I saw similar sentences and I see that even grammatical errors are similar. So what’s going on here? Where is the creativity? Where is the difference among new tourism layers?
In the traditional mode of doing travel and difference in Sri Lanka, I think we as tourists will be excited to come to your country and if you could be innovative, that would bring wonderful opportunities in Sri Lanka.
Singapore’s key market strategies
What Singapore has done is we have looked three basic strategies.
In pursuing a high yield driven marketing approach, Singapore focuses on differentiated marketing strategies. In Group A is what we call the cash cows, hence the need to protect this base. Countries such as China and Indonesia large come for MICE, business and leisure and the focus is increasing numbers and spending.
Group B revolves around markets in which we will be investing (in marketing) for growth. These are what we call stars with strong growth potential. Countries include Japan and Vietnam who come for medical tourism and education tourism.
The other category is Group C, which includes markets in Gulf and Russia. They are pursued as niche opportunities. Target segments include female travellers, senior travellers, cultural and heritage tourists and luxury travellers. In all of these segments we know who they are and we know exactly how to reach out to them. These market segments work for us. For example, the female market is something we’re heavily looking into; we’re trying to study the psyche of the international female traveller. We are coming up with hotels catering to female travellers in terms of female-scented rooms, all for females and many tourism products focus on females at the moment. Spiritual, health, wellness female market and females are increasingly having consumerism, which is getting very high among the female market, and this is definitely a high yield market segment.
Visitor-centric approach via research
Singapore has also been successful in visitor-centric approach. If you look at all the leading tourism destinations of the world, New Zealand, Dubai, Australia, Canada and Singapore are paying a lot of attention into coming out with market research and better understanding different segments of travellers. I’m not talking about the generic or broad research. Research is available to know exactly what travellers from Beijing are like, they know the psyche of the traveller from Shanghai is different from the traveller of Beijing and they know it differs from Shenzhen. So they go into that detail; what media to reach the Shanghai traveller and what experience he is seeking. With regard to India, research revealed they are very much into prestige and traditions and Indians who are travelling are very high on the need for family bonding.
For Australia, based on research we came up with a different campaign. The Australians love to go to a country where they are discovering. They are people and nation of discovers. They want to come to a destination like Singapore and tell them they are going to discover something different. So what we did was getting lost and finding the real Singapore. So we encouraged the Australians to come to Singapore and get lost. How many countries tell your visitors ‘come to my country and get lost’? We did that to them and the Australians love it because if you know the psyche of Australians, they love to get lost.
China is all about discovery and if you do a little bit of marketing research, you will realise that once upon a time they used to be traditional and wanted to see only the iconic destinations. So if they travel to Paris they have to take a picture with the Eiffel Tower, when they go to London they must take a picture with the London Bridge and their photos must show iconic constructions. Today Chinese travellers are different; they want to see something less known so we came up with a ‘new discoveries’ campaign, which tried to tell the Chinese ‘come to Singapore and discover things that were never taken photographs with’. If you look at the Chinese psyche, they are not interested in the Merlion anymore. Once upon a time Singapore’s Merlion was the most exciting thing, but today if you look at their photos you don’t see the Merlion because they are into discoveries. We also want Singapore to be a status symbol among Chinese tourists. At one time if you look at the Chinese passport, there are two countries they must have a stamp on their passport, one is Canada, the other two are Maldives and Bhutan, both of which are expensive destinations. We want Singapore to be the next one.
Invest in market research, on market segments’ needs. Look at what has worked in Singapore’s favour in market research. Sometimes you don’t have to pay too much to consulting companies and research companies to do that. There is already a lot of research readily available in various tourism boards, on the internet and in universities; so tap into your universities and the wealth of research that universities and academics have generated, which should rightly go to the tourism industry.
We have done a lot on tailoring personalised experiences based on market research. This is a winning formula of all leading tourism destinations in terms of research and I would say it’s not only tourism destinations; if you look at the leading hotels of the world or even tour operators, they are heavily spending money on market research.
From our market research we have found that today’s travellers don’t have so much of that herd mentality or groups so much and we are beginning to see that the high yield traveller belongs to the Free Independent Traveller. Mind you there is a lot of work to be done; a lot of creativity a lot works in trying to reach out the FIT. But if you reach out to the FIT, the yield is a lot higher and there is less competition within the FIT.
Use of digital media
Singapore was a country that was so farsighted that eight years ago we started to engage digital media when very few countries were doing it. I was from the industry and it offended me on the travel intermediaries, because as travel intermediaries we know that our job is to provide land operations, to be over there as tour guides offering our services to inbound tourist companies, but Singapore tourism board took a stand and said the new traveller is going to be somebody hanging out in the digital platform and we want to be ready for that. But they said to us ‘we are here to help you, we are definitely moving ahead’; there was no way that the Singapore Tourism Board was moving in favour of travel intermediaries. They said ‘we are ready to move ahead because that is where the traveller is going to be, but let us help you intermediaries in terms of using technology in your travel operations’.
We are very lucky to say that what they did at that time was with a lot of foresight and resulted in the very useful and effective ‘Your Singapore’ website. It’s one of the best websites in the world when it comes to a traveller finding experiences in a country. The ‘Your Singapore; website is an interactive travel portal that allows users to experience a virtual version of Singapore and positions Singapore as a future-facing destination. It also allows users to share their experiences in Singapore.
Singapore also established close strategic partnerships with leading social media outlets such as TripAdvisor, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and blogs/blogging. So for the tourism industry there is no point evading digitalisation; we need to seize and leverage on it for innovation and convenience for growth. If we do not use social media to leverage on distributing our destinations, it’s going to be very challenging in today’s market segments, especially if you are tapping the millennial traveller or generation Y.
Sri Lanka should move away from old travel itineraries. Options can include agro tourism, gemmology tourism and Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) tourism. The value of VFR is so crucial because when overseas friends and relatives are in town, locals also spend lot of money with them, visit attractions they may have never done. Four years ago Singapore Post distributed postage paid postcards for all citizens with a message to invite a friend or relative from any country to visit Singapore. Through the promotion, Singapore Post picked lucky winners and offered all-expenses-paid holidays. Canada, UK and New Zealand also do similar promotions. Given the large number of Sri Lankans abroad, this is a good marketing strategy. Use citizens and local community as tourism brand ambassadors and invite the world.
Another initiative is a website ‘Book a local to eat with’ for foreigners to give local cuisine experience and stay with local community. This is similar to local home stay program.
Thoughts on Sri Lanka
I love Sri Lanka, I love the hotels. Despite being here several times I haven’t gone through a hotel experience and left saying “wow” or “experienced something extraordinary,” except for a very few interesting and nice experiences. Sri Lanka has so much potential. You have beautiful infrastructure, hotels, warm hospitality and nice people. All that is required is fine-tuning and polishing and professionalism among staff and service.
Last year when I came I also offered my services pro bono but one year later neither of the two firms got back to me. I am not sure whether they were reluctant or lacked pro-activeness. But there are plenty of pro bono resources out here if the Sri Lanka tourism industry is keen to seize the opportunities. For example, one organisation just did that and the result is the forum I am addressing today, sharing my insights and expertise to benefit over 200 people.
In conclusion, one other thing that makes our Tourism Board very different from many other tourism boards – and personally I think that’s one of the success formulas – is that while many take up the role of marketing and promotions, Singapore’s Board takes up the role of travel industry development. That is the development of the community and development of trade, and in collaboration with various sectors, we have uplifted our industry to be one of the leading nations in the world for tourism.
– Pix by Lasantha Kumara
Skills, capacity and competitivenessA key initiative of Singapore is building competitiveness and capacity. This is what Nisha described as software, with the hardware being the various attractions. “Whilst Singapore has added a host of new attractions, going forward there will be limitations. So we are looking for more experiences for which the software or skills and competitiveness play a key part,” she said. “The processes must be streamlined and policies must be supportive for tourism,” Nisha emphasised. “We encourage and nurture innovative and new ideas. We have a web portal where people, students and universities can submit such ideas. We have incubator projects in classroom, submit it over there and discuss with the stakeholders and get the funding from the stakeholders and develop these products in Singapore,” Nisha added. The Singapore Board has established a new Kickstart Fund to encourage more innovative ideas and the scheme provides recipients with access to business incubator programs. This fund complements the existing Leisure Events Fund. Readying the workforce for booming tourism industry Singapore is preparing for 17 million tourists. Sri Lanka is targeting 2.5 million tourists. If Sri Lanka has concerns of labour and skills to meet such a large number, you can imagine the challenges faced by Singapore, which has a lesser number of people to serve on top of an ageing population. We are keen to have a vibrant industry in terms of staff and not be an industry looking old and we are encouraging more graduates to enter the tourism industry. We have supporting policies. We have the Tourism Industry Professionals Training Scheme, which is 100% paid by the Government. Companies are compensated to send their staff for training with payment for absenteeism/leave. This way the staff is sent for training and with the scheme, firms can pay part-time staff manning jobs of those being trained. For example, even the famous Musthapha Shopping Complex trained 1,000 of their staff on ‘Customer Service Professional’ and didn’t have to pay a single cent. Another initiative is the Professional Conversion Program. To address the lack of manpower, we are drawing people from other industries such as manufacturing, education and ex-armed forced personnel and giving them a six month internship program on tourism so that they can join the industry. The Business Development Fund is another key initiative to help firms embrace technology and productivity. There is also a fund to support development of in-house training curriculum with training provided by external agencies. This will ensure customised training for those in the industry. Training agencies claim the money from the Government. For the employees of the hospitality industry in Singapore there are various recognition and development schemes to enhance service capabilities and encourage them to create memorable and engaging experiences. They include initiatives such as Go the Extra Mile (GEM), Customer Service Professional (CSP) and Singapore Experience Awards Industry accreditation schemes Singapore has also been successful in enhancing the professionalism of travel agencies or destination management companies. Its travel agencies accreditation scheme – joint accreditation between the Consumer Association and National Association of Travel Agents, Singapore (NATAS) – is an excellent proposition even for Sri Lanka. Going through this accreditation, a travel agent can say ‘I am qualified travel agent’. This gives confidence to the tourist that he is dealing with a qualified travel agent. We have 260 qualified accredited travel agents. Its objectives are to increase productivity by equipping employees with the right service mind-sets, skills and knowledge; attract and retain talent by giving recognition through professional certification; improve industry’s professionalism and profitability through upgrading the human resource capabilities. Benefits include enhancing the image and professional standards of travel management practices in organisations and ensuring travel industry standards and capabilities for organisational and individual growth. Stakeholders of the initiative are the Singapore tourism industry, businesses, employers, training providers and travel professionals. “The level of professionalism and service amongst Singapore travel agents has to be raised. By spearheading a new accreditation scheme that recognises an individual’s effort to raise his or her professionalism, NATAS hopes that this will not only boost the workforce’s attractiveness, but help the industry bridge the ever-widening gap between travel agents and consumers,” according to NATAS. |
