TTG reported last week how homeworker Andrew Rowdon did a fantastic job, imaginatively helping the honeymoon couple to avoid a long flight delay so that they were able to enjoy the full time booked in Dubai before flying on to the Maldives.

Andrew was also able to call upon If Only’s emergency call centre staff when rearranging transfers. It’s a classic story outlining the value of using a resourceful travel agent working with a quality tour operator to ensure that their customer enjoys the best possible holiday.

It’s a scenario that is repeated day in, day out throughout our industry. We recently had Holidaysplease customers staying right in the centre of a sizeable earthquake in Peru. The guys at Latin Routes were first class in communicating with us and our customers, and making arrangements to ensure that their holiday plans were able to continue.

Internally as an industry we are good at patting ourselves on the back for a job well done. Externally we are a disaster.

We all see and hear the constant barrage of “expert” advice in the public domain about how to save money by booking “smart” and cutting out the travel trade. And yet there is hardly a whisper when an agent like Andrew saves his client’s honeymoon.

The growth of the Virtuoso consortium in the US and now worldwide shows what can be achieved when quality and expertise are successfully conveyed. Despite the fiercely competitive transactional nature of the US travel market through the age of the internet, in the words of the Virtuoso boss Matthew Upchurch, “being a travel advisor has been re-energised as a noble profession”.

The Virtuoso external message consistently extols the quality of its agent members and the trade partners it carefully chooses. Annual sales are now at $15.5 billion, so the buying public are clearly getting the message. Throughout my 30 years in travel our industry bodies have failed abysmally at representing members’ interests. We are poor at lobbying, and even worse at PR.

This needs to change. Individually there are many examples of proud travel professionals successfully getting the message about their service and the security of booking with them out there in front of customers and building great businesses with loyal customers as a result. Check out the Twitter timeline of @TCEmmaSavage as a fine example.

So why can we not replicate the great work Emma does at a level that really makes a difference?

To reach and influence a national audience individually is tough. But let us come together, pool resources, invest jointly. Do so and I suspect that the noble UK travel trade will soon become re-energised in the minds of the buying public.

Sound like a plan?

Richard Dixon is director of Holidaysplease