Why truth and integrity must never be an after-thought or optional extra

My two weeks annual leave hasn’t quite worked out as planned. Week one was perfect – weather, food, company…but week two has been a little different. Spending the last six days either in bed or on the sofa feeling pretty rough with a nasty bout of something resembling flu – a direct result of being “confined to barracks” for a little over 18 months I had more time on my hands than predicted.

In between bouts of feeling exasperated as plans for a busy but fun week fell apart, I took to reading through various travel articles, emails and working my way through different social media posts and messages. A combination of different articles and messages took me right back to a lesson learned in my early childhood…...

As a five-year-old my sister and brother and I would often visit the shop on our “estate”. The shop sold everything from washing powder to bacon, squirty cream to sweets. It would be the sweets that would be my downfall. Whilst shopping with mum, who was at the time pre-occupied with two younger children, plus getting the essential item she needed, I filled my coat pockets with Blackjacks and Fruit Salads. I don’t remember how big my pockets were but I snaffled away a fair few (anoraks had big pockets!!) Once home I sampled my wares only to be exposed by the snitching twosome who highlighted to mum that I wouldn’t share. Mum quickly discovered my stash and duly marched me back to the shop – still with black teeth and tongue I seem to recall. The surviving sweets were returned and I was chastised in typical fashion 70’s – I never wanted to be taken away by the local bobby, and I learnt a valuable life lesson, don’t steal and always tell the truth. I subsequently went on to get my first job at the age of thirteen, working Saturdays in that very same shop.

Back to the here and now. On Friday (14th October) I read an on-line article about a travel business updating their members on performance – it wasn’t a lengthy article highlighting just a few performance results, which at best, made little or no sense at all. After the eighteen months we have all experienced I am all for celebrating every success (every positive has a value) but this feature was to put it mildly clearly widely inaccurate, either as a result of journalistic interpretation or over exaggeration on the speaker’s part. PR has always been a valuable tool, and if we believe the sentiment that no PR is bad PR, then the coverage probably won’t harm the business concerned but does it portray parts of our industry in a very professional light??

Let me give you some other examples to ponder on….

A few weeks ago, an in-resort customer service issue needing resolving. As a business we know how important it is to sort out a problem quickly and efficiently thereby retaining the customers full confidence – after all issues do happen and the problem is there to be owned by all parties involved (in this case a tour operator and us the agent). The work we undertook on behalf of the operator also meant we were able to identify and correct another issue that would have caused further unnecessary upset as a result of a hotel cancellation that hadn’t filtered through to the supplier. The results of our intervention ended up with our business paying a hotel bill on behalf of the supplier. As a business we are now waiting for the refund having supplied a copy invoice showing the amount was paid, an exert from the bank statement detailing the transaction but so far that isn’t enough. Owning the issue has cost us significant amounts of management time and has left us with an outstanding claim for a refund as last week we are asked for further proof of payment.

Then, just to complete the honest and integrity hat trick, an email message arrived via Linked In messenger from a source who a) wanted to connect b) asked if they could prepare and manage my content on the platform? It is my personal belief that Linked In has a real value to members if posts are original or clearly identified as “shared” by the member. I use Linked In a lot and trust it as a forum and whilst having somebody else to do the work may seem attractive to some it seems all rather pointless and slightly disingenuous to me. Need less to say I deleted the invite to connect and pursue further.

Truth and integrity are a key part of Designer Travel’s DNA – its part of who we are as a business and whilst total perfection might be what we aspire to we really do hope that everyone who know us well will realise just how important these values are to us.

Whether you are a supplier of any description looking for new partners to work with or a travel industry professional looking for new opportunities please make sure you have truth and integrity as part of your “wish list” – and always, always do your homework when you are looking to work with a new business.

Don’t let truth and integrity become an after-thought!