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Uma Somia

Uma Somia

Co-founder and CEO of destination management company Europe Incoming, and co-host of The Travel Disruptor podcast.

Sep 30, 2026

22:47
So yeah, just, just wanna see what your take on this is, Uma, really.
22:50
The, the salesperson represents the company, but the business comes through the company, not the salesperson, and that is in, uh, in an ideal world.
23:00
In the real world, we've seen with our experiences that that's not the case.
23:06
Specifically, as we were talking about the exhibition I- IFTM, the French market, um, we had-- I think you know that for many years we had very many French clients that we worked with.
23:16
We built up a very good French team.
23:19
Um, we gave our trust as management to the pers- to the team to take care of our French clients.
23:26
Um, the team then decided they didn't agree with how management was working, so they left.
25:28
It's the brand, and Uma is amongst all the people that are in the company, right? So I think that's where the trade-off is.
6:12
So it's
6:13
pretty much the same path for me personally.
6:16
Um, And I think it helps.
6:19
We have highly pressurized jobs.
6:22
So to find that half an hour, an hour for yourself where you're not connected to anything else except yourself and your well-being, I think makes it better.
6:33
I think it makes you manage the stress better.
6:35
I see when I go to the office and I haven't done what I normally do in the morning, I feel a lot more agitated.

21 MINS LATER

27:38
What's your experience in this?
1:51
Yeah.
1:51
So that was one form of communication.
1:53
The other form of communication we had with suppliers to have some kind of a record as far as invoicing was concerned.
2:00
We used to have carbon copies of three pieces of paper where you kept one and one went to the supplier and one stayed in the invoicing file.
2:09
So when the supplier sent you back an invoice, you had a copy of what you'd booked.
2:12
So invoices in those days were sent by typewriter.
2:16
So basically, David, who was my business partner, actually, he was my boss at that stage, used to send all handwritten invoices to customers by typewriter.

9 MINS LATER

11:41
it's reported on some form of an app or some form of whatever it is device you know an AI agent then understands the coach is broken down and then starts trying to replace the coach as quickly as possible with some either local companies or a company that we've contracted or if it's the same company or if it's a local whatever it is ultimately trying to get a coach there as quickly as possible for the customer so they don't they're not weighing around too long how is that any different from a human being that's going to do the same thing

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