Travel agents who sell more trips to Bermuda than they did in the past will now be rewarded for their efforts.

The news came yesterday as Tourism Department chiefs revealed the Island's new overseas sales and distribution plan which is intended to generate 40,000 more air arrivals next year.

"The core of this year's programmes is to make people want to book Bermuda and to book it now. We want people to not just be interested, but give them a compelling reason to book now,'' Tourism Department director Gary Phillips told The Royal Gazette .

"If we can get travel agents to sell Bermuda, we will be in a much better position. This has not been happening to the extent we want it to happen.

"People are moving into using incentives to promote business and we will be offering incentives in trade for bookings.'' Tourism Minister David Dodwell noted: "Incentives and awards create the highest level of accountability.'' And the department's director of sales in North America, Toby Dillas, added: "The whole core of the plan is to establish business partnerships and get people to sell Bermuda.

"Where as before we hoped they would recommend the Island, the travel agent will be compensated for any incremental increase in business.'' The tourism task force who came up with a five-year plan for tourism identified a need to improve the sales and distribution system if the Island wished to be globally competitive.

The Island's sales force will now be restructured and become a field marketing team with two senior regional managers who will focus on tour operators, national travel agency headquarters -- such as AAA and American Express -- and local hotels.

Tourism to offer incentives Richard Eve will work with tour operators while Garth Peters works with national travel agency headquarters and local hotels -- he has already met with all of the Island's licensed accommodations.

Meanwhile regional field marketing managers will deal with 50 preferred travel agency accounts in their area and, less frequently, 70 second tier regional travel agencies.

These managers will be trained to negotiate business partnerships between the Tourism Department and local hotels, and between the department and preferred travel agencies.

They will be responsible for managing these accounts rather than simply servicing them as they had done in the past.

These agreements or "compacts'' will outline the commitments made by the travel agents. These include generating an incremental increase over the base number of air arrivals they provide the Island, providing information on their bookings to the department and the commitment made by the department, paying a volume incentive upon delivery of the sales targets or providing familiarisation trips to top agency producers.

Similar compacts will be drawn up between the department and local hotels but the hotels will not be asked to contribute to rewarding the incentives to the agents although, if the programme is successful, it could grow to that point in the future.

Instead, hotels will be asked to share information with the department on a confidential basis. Pooling their information with that of travel agents will hopefully increase the ability of the department to target markets more effectively.

Mr. Dodwell said: "In order to justify the investment, we hope to raise an extra 40,000 visitors next year. If you do not have a goal you do not give people a target to shoot for.'' TRAVEL TOU