Small Travel Agencies have advantage in Social Media

It’s not very often that small travel agencies have any kind of advantage over their much larger and better funded counterparts, but when it comes to Social Media they have a distinct advantage.  Small agencies whether they have one employee or many tend to be better prepared to handle personal requests and offer one on one service.  Large agencies, especially OTAs, are generally more focused on volume and, although many have excellent customer service, their smaller margins and focus on the bottom line mean that personal interaction in social media needs to have a clear and measurable... Read more »

So what would a Google + Expedia Look Like?

I realize I’m a day behind most of my blogging colleagues on commenting on the “Google eyeing Expedia” rumour that resulted in a subsequent rise in Expedia’s share price. For the most part I’m not a big fan of rumours, but it did get me thinking about what such a beast would look like. In November of last year Tim Armstrong from Google presented at the PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando and stated in no uncertain terms that Google has no interest in entering the travel space. So why, less than four months later, would that message have changed so dramatically.... Read more »

The Value of Travel Agents - Unique Products & Value Add Services

An interesting article was posted by Travelmole.com today that strongly support my view that travel agents need to differentiate themselves by focusing on a niche and providing value added services. The article titled “Travel agents seek supplier support” states that: “A staggering 94% of agents who were concerned with supplier relationships and 79% of travel agents concerned with profit margins said they already had or were planning to expand their product offerings in order to mitigate those concerns. Many were including medical, green, cultural and events tourism packages... Read more »

The Value of Travel Agents - Customer Service

I recently posted the summary of the presentation by Steve Barnhart, CEO of Orbitz. One the key points presented by Mr. Barnhart is that technologies are very good at aggregating and distributing travel product and controlling costs while increasing profitability, but they are not very good at improving the customer experience. He then went on to say that we, as an industry, should be focusing our efforts on using technologies to improve customer service. I emphatically agree with this point of view and yet I ask the question, why bother? Can technology really be used as a good substitute... Read more »

Mr. Al Lenza - VP Distribution & E-Commerce North West Airlines

Paypal and billmelater technologies are being accepted by airlines now. Internet has been focused on low fares. Mandate is to focus on revenue and provide access to low fare information as it pertains to specific traveler requirements, for example the lowest direct fare, or the lowest first class fare, etc. Meta search and vertical search - What is NWA view of these intermediary channels (for example Kayak.com). Meta search is different because they have a different customer value proposition. They render lowest fares and that doesn’t help NWA revenues. Kiosk - 85% of passengers check... Read more »

FlightCentre buys Liberty Travel and Adds 193 more stores

I realize this isn’t really technology related, but this news item came to me directly from Sean Sutherland, VP of E-Commerce at FlightCentre. By purchasing Liberty Travel, FlightCentre has just made the U.S. it’s largest market outside of Australia. This brings a tremendous amount of brand recognition for FlightCentre in the U.S. and also increases the profile of the flightcentre.com website in North America. Looking forward we see the baby boomers, who are also predominantly non-web users, retiring and becoming more mobile. This generation of wealthy people will be looking for... Read more »

Shocking comments from Airline Exec. about Travel Agents

In a recent article about Easyjet’s agreements with Amadeus and Galileo, Ryanair’s communication head, Peter Sharrard referred to travel agents as “parasites” and “rip-off middlemen”. As a direct to consumer supplier, I can understand why Sharrard would consider agents as an expensive intermediary but to alienate them by referring to them in a derogatory fashion doesn’t make any sense at all. There was a time in the early nineties when Canadian air carriers did the same direct to consumer sales tactics by cutting out the agents. What they found was that... Read more »

MLM Travel Business vs. Affilliate Sites

Alex Bainbrigde over at Travel UCD wrote about a company called Your Travel Business (YTB.com). I had heard about this MLM travel business a few years ago when it first started and I paid it very little heed. I am quite surprised that it has managed to last this long. To my surprise it is now publicly traded and boasts over $226 Million in sales in 2006. I have to admit however, that my perspective is ofcourse that of a technologist and not that of a laymen, so my review is strictly from a technologist’s point of view. I reviewed the online booking system and I was quite surprised at... Read more »

Only One in Four Top Canadian Travel Sites Support Carbon Offsetting

Today is blog action day, a day when thousands of blogs from around the world, including this one, are posting articles about environmental sustainability. I first discovered this on Kevin May’s Travolution blog. On his post he compared the top five U.K. travel sites and reviewed their environmental policies. Of the top five, only one Easyjet has incorporated carbon offsetting directly into the checkout process. Of the remaining four, only one, Lastminute.com allows customers to offset carbon using a seperate carbon calculator.So, in keeping with Kevin’s analysis, I went online... Read more »

10 years of Online Travel - A History Lesson

Many of you have probably already seen this article from Travolution that describes in detail, the history of online travel. It was the first time I’ve gone through it and I have to say, it was delightful (in a scary sort of way). It is interesting to see how the attitudes to online travel have changed, especially from the supplier stand point and how predictions made 5 or even 10 years ago were totally off base. For example in the article about 1996, there is a notable statement… “the Internet will lose its mystique in two years and problems with security and speed will be... Read more »

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