About Medway Travel

“We’ll do it ourselves"  Or, in a company "We’ll let the travellers arrange their own – after all, they know what they want.”

Fact: If you arrange your own travel, you may miss the following benefits of using a professional agent or Travel Management Compan, which:

· Provides consistently good value fares – the cheapest fare is not necessarily the best logical solution
· Considers the overall trip costs - not just the fare
· Combines different elements of a trip
· Provides alternatives, including different modes of transport, advising on the pros and cons of each
· Provides professional support to eradicate problems
· Saves bookers a great deal of time and anxiety

Further, Travel Management Companies:

· Help to ensure Travel Policy Compliance
· Take staff security into account
· Keep clients up to date on travel industry developments
· Draw clients’ attention to wider potential benefits
· Provide management reports for analysis to promote more efficient travel arrangements

If you make your own arrangements, you may suffer the following disadvantages

· An inability to see all the fares available
· An inability to hold the best fares while checking that the trip is viable / acceptable to the traveller
· Possible inadequate understanding of fare restrictions, sometimes leading to additional costs
· Conscientious staff trying to save pennies on the cost, may fail to get best value tickets
· Research time of your staff is likely to cost £30 - £50 per transaction
· You have less leverage with vendors for price advantage and problem resolution

And, you will miss out on services that add so much more to overall efficiency:

· No Out of Hours support service if things go wrong at inconvenient times
· A reduced ability to monitor and enforce travel policy compliance
· You may have an incomplete picture of where members of staff are at any moment
· You may lose control of your “duty of care” for employees
· Difficulty of amassing management information leads to lack of control of travel arrangements overall

Contrary to common expectation, objectively reviewing your policy of allowing DIY bookings, can produce a significant bottom–line benefit.

If you wish to optimise your travel experience and budget, Medway Travel is the ideal partner for you to work with, whether for your business travel, personal travel, Groups and Event arrangements or if you are considering buying an overseas property.

• Our service is personal and professional.
• We have separate departments dedicated to each of the three main activities of Corporate Travel Management, Leisure Travel and Groups& Events, each with its own specialist staff, so you can be sure of the best attention and expert service, to suit your interest.
• We care passionately that our clients should be delighted with the quality  of all we do for them.
• Our staff are experienced and mature travel experts, who are keen to understand your ideas and preferences.
• We cover everything a discerning individual or corporate traveller could require.
• We are managed by our owner who has many years experience of world-wide travel as a Director of large engineering companies.
• We are fully bonded and licensed, for our clients’ security and benefit.
• We belong to the large consortium,  Advantage Travel Centres, which gives us access to best available fares and rates.
• We have the best and latest technology.

All the above ensures that our clients receive the best travel advice and services available.

All our clients benefit from our extensive experience every time they contact us.

If you are a corporate:

• When we first start working with you, we take great care to understand your particular needs and to adjust our systems to them. This is an essential part of our Welcome Programme.
• For the first three months, your account will be carefully monitored by David Pickard, who is responsible for client relations.
• Working with your nominated consultants and our Sales Manager Sean de Lacey, who has years of business to business sales experience, David will integrate your company profile and travel policy into our systems. He will work with your travel bookers, making sure the transfer of your business is as seamless as possible and that we have correctly taken onboard your requirements. David and Sean together, will introduce you to new ideas that we believe may be to your advantage.
• After three months we should then be in a position to fine-tune the Service Level Agreement.  This will provide us with a standard against which we continue to monitor our performance.
• From this point onwards our quality procedures and investment in both people and technology will enable us consistently to provide an unusually high standard of service, optimising the effectiveness of your travel budget.
• Regular review meetings will keep us informed of your requirements and you of new opportunities
• We encourage each client to have two consultants who become their regular contacts.
• All our travel consultants are experienced and highly trained and are well able to handle your business in the absence of your normal contacts. Our technology enables all your company’s individual requirements and travellers details to be available to every consultant.

If you have Leisure Travel in mind:

• Our experienced staff will carefully consider your requirements with you.
• They will research options using many different specialist information sources.
• They will discuss the best options with you and advise on the pros and cons of each.
• You will be offered those small additional services, which can add so much to your holiday experience, but which only experienced consultants will consider.
• All the arrangements will be handled for you exactly as agreed.

Policy

The company has been accredited with ISO 9001/2000 for all its travel services since 2002, and aims to ensure continued improvement within its system.

Our policy is to supply a full range of travel management and group travel services to corporate clients and a comprehensive Leisure Travel service to private clients. These are to be delivered in a professional, ethical and supportive manner so as to conform to all the clients’ reasonable expectations of an excellent supplier in this field.

The Quality policy has been defined and is documented to meet the organisational goals of the company and also the expectations and needs of its clients.

The quality objective is to achieve client performance analyses for the company’s services, and relate these to a continual programme of skills training of all employees and their use of suitable technology. These requirements and objectives are considered at all Management review meetings.

The Quality System exercises control over the aspects of the company’s activities as laid down in ISO 9001/2000 and all operational procedures and company regulations referred to in the company’s related quality manuals. The company ensures that the complete Quality System is known and understood within the organisation, and is under review in a systematic way for its continuing suitability.

The Managing Director has the responsibility for the quality of the company’s services, and works in close conjunction with the Quality Manager to ensure the implementation of all procedures and the maintenance of records within the System.

All employees in the company are responsible for ensuring that the quality objectives are achieved and relevant procedures are properly in use.

---

Quality performance

Every 6 months we carry out a survey to find out how our clients regard our service. We have always found the response to be most helpful in guiding our decisions, as we strive to make our service ever more valuable to all our clients.

In the latest survey, some 200 questionnaires were sent out to the staff of our corporate clients with whom we work, and yet again, the responders were most generous with their marking and comments. The detail is summarised below:

On the eleven basic features of our service, we were appraised across all responders (having given the guidance 1= v. poor, 5 = acceptable and 10 = excellent) at an average at 9.16 out of 10  - i.e. 91.6% of maximum possible score.

Included in this average were three elements of a subjective nature, regarding our being

• "fair and honest in our dealings with clients",
• "using our initiative on clients' behalf", and our being
• "genuinely keen to give the best possible service".

For these three we were marked at an average of 92.3% of maximum possible score.

In our previous survey, over a slightly longer list of features, we achieved 92.8%, so we believe this consistency tends to confirm the reliability of the results and the genuine satisfaction of our clients.

The testimonials provided by both Corporate and Leisure clients,   confirm our confidence that your travel will be in excellent hands when you place it with Medway Travel.

At Medway Travel, the whole team takes Clients’ concerns very seriously.

On learning of a concern or problem – whether it arises during a trip or is associated with the booking or accounting process, an action report is raised by the member of staff hearing of the problem, and discussed with our Quality Manager. An action plan is agreed and progress monitored.

If the concern relates to substandard service from one of the travel vendors, we will make representations to the vendor on the traveller’s behalf and seek compensation or an explanation and apology. It can sometimes take vendors a number of weeks to investigate the facts, the cause and the liability of such complaints, and longer still to agree any legitimate compensation, due to the size of the bureaucracies involved. During this time, we will be both chivvying them and keeping our client informed. Over the last few years we have handled 6 such concerns for every one thousand bookings we have made.

On the other hand, the concern may be due to a fault in our own work (we are only human, so regrettably it can happen!). In such cases we investigate the situation as a priority and aim to respond meaningfully to the client within days. Our policy is to be completely honest in cases where we have been at fault and to try to ensure that our client does not suffer any loss as a result. The majority of such cases results in our scrutinising our procedure manual for flaws in the systems or in a training session with the staff, to try to ensure that the problem does not recur.  Analysis of the statistics shows that over the last few years we have handled some 5 such concerns for every one thousand bookings we have made. Pleasingly, the average over the last 18 months has dropped to 4.4 per thousand bookings.

The whole system is carefully monitored through our ISO 9001.2000 procedures, externally audited every year, and each action report is signed off by the managing director to ensure necessary action has been taken.

For a traveller, there are times when the experience is memorable for all the wrong reasons: mechanical problems, poor service, bad food, lost luggage, or any of a number of other problems that result in a significant inconvenience or financial loss for the passenger. If you have such an experience, you may want to deal with it by lodging a complaint.

Dealing with a problem immediately

Whenever you can identify a problem on the spot, your best option will be to bring it to the airline's or service provider's attention and give their staff a chance to resolve the issue.

If you are at an airport, then contact the airline's customer service representatives, a manager, or some other employee who has the authority immediately to take care of your problem. For example, if you are bumped from your flight due to overbooking, you are typically eligible for some kind of compensation from the airline. If you are in flight, then contact the head flight attendant. If the airline makes an offer that is acceptable, take it. If not, make a counter offer. If you and the airline can come to an agreement on the counter offer, then everyone is happy, but if it can't be resolved on the spot, you should start to document your experience, and prepare to file a formal complaint.

The same principles apply to a hotel accommodation or service problem or a car rental concern.

Understand why you are complaining

If it is not possible to resolve the issue on the spot, and you have therefore decided to gather information about your situation to lodge a complaint either by phone or in writing, we suggest you consider a few basic things about your particular circumstances:

• Why you are complaining,
• What situation caused you to complain and what people or organizations played a role in that situation
• What action do you want taken that will address the complaint
• What should you reasonably expect as an outcome

To you, it may seem obvious why you want to complain and what result you want, but you have to be very specific to have the best chance of a satisfactory outcome. If you are not able to detail sufficient relevant facts, it will be difficult, even for a well intentioned airline, to respond appropriately. One must also be reasonable when it comes to the expected outcome of your complaint. You should only expect compensation if the airline is obligated to provide it.

Taking the time to assess your situation at the beginning, will make the rest of the complaint process as smooth as possible. That complaint process can be roughly broken down into the following sets of tasks:

1. Writing down the facts of the situation,
2. Understanding whether you have sufficient justification to expect a response or compensation as a result of your complaint. Check with our consultants concerning the ticketing rules and the contracted obligations of the provider,
3. Submitting your complaint to the appropriate addressee.

Medway Travel will help

We would suggest you ask Medway Travel to take your case up with the travel vendor in question, on your behalf. We are pleased to help clients in such circumstances, and with many of the vendors we have contacts who are not normally accessible to the general public and who may take a more amenable view, in the light of the substantial business we put their way.

The following mission statement was developed in a full staff meeting and with the personal input of all members of staff. It is therefore not only understood, but is a personal commitment from all concerned:

Our objectives:

To be recognised as the most effective, professional and friendly provider of travel services in the industry.

Our approach:

• To treat clients, business partners and each other, fairly and with respect
• To work as a team
• To ensure ever-increasing knowledge and expertise is utilised to everyone’s advantage

In this way we become greater than the sum of our parts, optimising our potential for the benefit of our clients and the company alike.

Our Motto:

Traditional values - modern approach

At Medway Travel, we believe in having the best of the latest technology available to enable our consultants to give the best possible service and to assist our clients both to optimise their travel experiences and to manage their travel.

Furthermore, we train our staff to exploit this technology to the full, and support our clients in their full use of the technology we provide for them to use.

So, whether it relates to the research of business trips or holidays, the ease of communications, the reporting of travel management information for corporate clients, or the handling of their emergency travel problems, we are amongst the leaders in the industry.