Temora Hello World Travel agency has scooped both a national and state award at the recent Owner/Managers conference held in Cairns. Tania Botha has owned the Temora branch for 15 years and has been involved in the travel industry for more than 25 years, she is passionate about the industry and she loves her clients. Ms Botha said she was completely shocked when the winners were announced and it was her agency. “It felt amazing, I was really shocked as I wasn’t expecting it at all,” she said. “The last two years have been really good years, but yeah, still really surprised.” The first award was the Hello World Travel Agency of the Year Award for NSW and ACT and then the national award was announced. Some of the criteria for the awards include highest selling, most preferred partner support, client review and repeat clientele percentage. These awards are not ones that agencies can self-nominate for and the Temora agency was up against much larger agencies in metropolitan areas. Ms Botha said she has seen an uptake in the use of travel services over the years since the Covid 19 pandemic when travel plans were thrown into disarray. “It made people realise that in times of need and trouble, it's always nice to go be able to talk to someone face-to-face and to have a local person to help them out, so to speak, “Ms Botha said. “I know during COVID, a lot of people that had booked direct with airlines and so forth, it was a nightmare for them because it took up all of their time, whereas for all of those that have booked with a travel agent, we were there to go into bat for them with getting their money back and refunds. “There are obviously people out there still that book directly themselves, but I've seen more and more, like I said, the last two years have been our best years yet, more and more people are coming to travel agents. “One, they’re time poor and two, they want an expert to look after everything for them.”
