The UK’s fourth largest travel agent has begun a campaign to
encourage holiday tour operators to be more transparent about the
number of customer complaints they get.
Co-op Travelcare,
which is part of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, wants tour
operators to get together this year to agree a way of measuring
customer complaints – and then to publicise the figures.
The
travel company already tries to log the number of complaints against
various operators in an annual service levels report, but it says many
operators fail to co-operate.
In its recently released second
service levels report, Co-op Travelcare, which booked holidays for more
than 630,000 people during the summer 1999 season, pledges to push for
more transparency in the industry.
‘The evidence is that
generally holiday makers are getting a good deal, so we can’t
understand why some tour operators are so reluctant to give out
information on their own complaints levels,’ said Yvonne Rankin, group
general manager.
Rankin claimed most operators featured in
this year’s service levels report ‘have told us they believe a common
independently checked system of complaints reporting could be helpful
to the consumer.’
Co-op Travelcare’s service levels report
is this year audited by the National Centre for Business and Ecology
(NCBE), which is a partnership between the Co-operative Bank and the
four universities in Manchester.
The report contains a
special page featuring its own record on complaints, which rose 125 per
cent last year to 324 complaints affecting 780 clients.
It attributes the rise on ‘more rigorous internal reporting procedures’.
Complaints against those tour operators that did disclose details were
13 per cent up on last year and were mostly about the standard of
accommodation.
The report also pledges Co-op Travelcare to influence its suppliers to reduce their impact on the environment.
The company has worked with the NCBE to produce a policy that says it
will ‘combine environmental objectives with our core business
activities, reflecting social responsibility and co-operative values’.
