Penny Spencer

Biggest management mistake? I think a lot of the time, it can be in employing or not employing the right people. It’s very difficult in an interview process when people have learned to tell you what you want to hear, and it’s hard to check that.

We ended up at Fair Work Australia one time. That taught me not to do things in a hurry. I’m very process driven, and I’d gone through all the processes, but there was the one thing I’d missed, and that was purely because I’d wanted this person to leave as quickly as possible.

If someone has been at Spencer Travel for 10 years, they get a one carat diamond and they get to choose how they have that one carat diamond. I’ve got four of them, and two have got a ring, and one has got a bracelet and one has got a necklace. And it’s very much part of our culture, and people talk about it all the time.

I thought “What would I like to get when I’ve been with a company for a long time?” Diamonds are my best friend, so I thought diamonds. And really, a one carat diamond is ten thousand dollars. An investment of a thousand dollars a year is not a lot of money when you put it like that.

There’s a lot of direct competition from our suppliers. Our suppliers are hotels and airlines, so as you know, if you are a frequent flyer, you get every single special and everything imaginable from Qantas or whoever direct into your inbox, and some of them say, “Contact your travel agent.” Most of them don’t.

The internet is a threat, but for corporate travel, not so much. Interestingly enough, five years ago, all domestic corporate travel was being done online. Now people are coming back saying, “Oh, it’s too time consuming.”

I think there’s still the boys’ club out there, and it’s definitely out there in the travel industry as well. I’ve cut through that, and the only way you can cut through that is to be successful and gain respect and trust from them. Once you do that, you’re in that club, but it takes a lot to get there.