Second Travel Experience store opens it doors

The opening of the Sandton City store follows just two months after the opening of Travel Experience in Menlyn Park.

Travel Experience - South Africa's first national chain of true one-stop mobility shops combine the unique services of an AA Auto Shop with the best possible travel deals available, provided by South Africa's second largest retail travel agency network.

The joint venture between the AA and SA Travel Centre means that AA members and other travellers may now visit a Travel Experience store for everything from air tickets, travel packages and accommodation bookings to international drivers' permits, cross-border travel documents, and accessories such as luggage and baby car seats.

Michael Stöltzing, CEO of the SA Travel Centre group says: "The new Travel Experience stores provide a brand new concept in retail travel, and a new era of service that aims to meet every mobility-related need an AA member or any member of the travelling public can have. It also offers a unique business formula, combining the traditional retail store with the service and membership relationship component of the AA and the conventional travel retail business. Such a venture provides a very robust trading platform, which incorporates various income streams and unique selling propositions in prime shopping environments"

The Travel Experience Sandton store is owned by the AA / SA Travel Centre joint venture and will therefore play an important role in piloting research, quality management and measurement, as well as new product development.

Said the AA's Value Added Services Divisional Manager, Kenny MacKinnon: "Travel Experience has been designed to make planning a journey as pleasant as the trip itself. Currently, some travellers tend to visit the AA only after they have made all their other travel arrangements, but the new Travel Experience stores offer local and international travellers everything they need in one location - all the usual benefits of an AA Auto Shop, along with a host of new travel products and services.

"The new concept eliminates the need for travellers in having to first visit a travel agent for their flights and accommodation, and then having to also visit an AA Auto Shop for international drivers permits, maps and guides and travel accessories. These services are now all integrated under one roof", added MacKinnon.

During the next year the AA's 13 remaining Auto Shops will all be repositioned as new Travel Experience stores. Within the next three years the organisation also plans to open an additional 15 to 20 shops across the country, enabling the AA to further improve its service to members and customers, particularly in those areas where no AA Auto Shops presently exist.