AUNDREA'S ARMY IS ON THE MARCH!
I couldn't do this week's column without mentioning Aundrea's Army - a campaign started by our very own Martin Maclaren of Beachcomber Tours to raise funds to help Aundrea Bannatyne who works for Thomas Cook in Belfast.
Aundrea has been diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer and the money being raised is to pay for support and specialist treatment in Manchester or Germany. Martin has done an outstanding job with the campaign gathering momentum in Ireland and also here in Scotland and the rest of the UK. They raised £19K in one event last week at the Stormont Hotel. Amazing!
They have a £100k target to hit and the fund is currently sitting at £41K - please look out for any Aundrea's Army fundraising events near you (Jo Dooey has organised an event at Jilts Bar, Hamilton, 9
th
September) - or if you wish to contribute directly, this can be done via the following link :
https://www.gofundme.com/2gtranmq
The Autumn Seminar and Network Lunch is our next event on 15
th
September at the Waldorf Astoria in Edinburgh. If you are interested in technology and the effect it will have on distribution in the future, this should be right up your street. We have a couple of prominent speakers from GDS and technology provider Amadeus:
Rob Golledge - Head of Marketing Communications will open with a discussion on a recent report conducted by Amadeus, on who your customers are and an insight into how you will be doing business with them in the future; this will also be combined with trends for luxury travel.
Then Svend Leirvaag - Vice President Industry Affairs at Amadeus will follow with his views and updates on distribution via channels such as NDC and direct connect strategies.
Personally, I'm very interested in all of these topics, so for me it should be a great seminar - please come along with an open mind and plenty of questions.....
We open the voting for the SPAA Annual Travel Awards this week - and the good news is that we now have an updated electronic voting system!
No more filling in forms and posting them - emails have been sent to agents on our database, but if you haven't already voted for your favourite suppliers - please get online and vote at
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/SPAA2016
Voting closes 10th October 2016.
