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New Frontiers have appeared twice on BBC News. To view each report, simply click on the video image.
December 2006 - Julie Feuell, MD of New Frontiers was interviewed as part of a BBC News report on the changing face of the travel industry job market. This report appeared on BBC1, BBC World, BBC News 24 & MSNBC News.
Read more on this report in Julia's Blog
July 2005 - Julia Feuell, MD of New Frontiers was interviewed for a BBC Report on women entrepreneurs. This report appeared on BBC News 24.
Julia's Blog - A response to the BBC Report of Dec 2006
Today I was interviewed by the BBC regarding the potential job losses to be announced on Thursday 14th December.
The interview will be televised on BBC1 Breakfast News as well as News24 and World News on Thursday. Nigel Cassidy asked me questions about why I thought Thomson may be making the cuts and whether travel industry jobs may be in decline. I felt the weight of the travel industry in answering these questions, but tried to answer as honestly as possible.
The honest answer is I don’t know why Thomson are making the redundancies. The consumers using the internet as their preferred method of booking low cost flights and short haul straight forward holidays has meant less people booking through agents. However Thomson’s business model appears to have all the competitive elements – good website, lowcost airline, travel agents to sell their products, great package holidays - so having too many staff seems odd after streamlining their business to encompass all the essential bits. I do know that pressure from fuel prices is causing a lot of companies to make cost savings and that Thomson in particular have had a lot of pressure from their German owners to cut costs.
I commented that Tour Operators offering long haul, luxury holidays or unusual adventure holidays are doing well. Customers are clearly wanting to call or visit Travel Agents when they want to spend quite a lot of money – over £1000 – to make sure everything is as they want it. According to the Travolution conference in November, most people are comfortable to spend up to £1000, but more nervous over this amount.
I also mentioned that as the industry adjusts to the technological changes and new customer buying patterns, new jobs are being created all the time. The public generally are not aware of these new jobs compared to job losses as they don’t really get reported. I commented that therefore everyone needs to put their hand up for training and keep on re-skilling or transferring their skills to new roles as and when required. Their future may depend upon it. Finally I emphasised that the travel industry is doing very well and more people are going on holiday more frequently causing call centres to swell with staff and back office roles behind the internet to be numerous. We currently have over 500 jobs outstanding for loads of different roles.
Why am I telling you all this! Well, very worryingly, I have no idea how the BBC will report my comments and wanted you to know what I said. I do hope I’ve done the industry proud and that all those people facing potential redundancy can feel a little better knowing that it is not their fault and that if they wish to continue in travel, there is still loads of opportunity for them.
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