There are 79,000 corporate travel agents and $145Bworth of sales generated by travel managers. AmadeusOne is a corporate tool that brings all the ingredients of corporate travel together into one tool. Amadeus is trying to tackle the concept of the super PNR by providing access to a variety of products through a variety of channels. [...]
In the retail supply chain you have manufacturers who make products, distributors/wholesalers who ship and distribute the products, and retailers who sell the products to end consumers. At each level there is a mark-up that affects the overall retail price of the product starting with a known cost price. The retailer, for example, will generally [...]
In a recent post titled “Travel Agents Finding Relevance Amidst Web 2.0” I mentioned a site called Zicasso.com. In the post I misspelled the domain and within a day I received a message from the CEO Brian Tan informing me of the error. I corrected the mistake and thanked him for his attention to detail. [...]
I read an article today on Boston.com which I found really interesting. Firstly, it confirmed something that I have been arguing for a long time, that travel agents can find relevance in the new age of on-line travel and secondly, despite what critics say, travel agents are not going to go away. The article titled [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Michelle Peluso, CEO of Travelocity focused her talk on improving the user interface for consumers of travel products. The presentation was the first of an excellent series of presentations by top brand executives. Here is a summary of her presentation and my commentary from the PhoCusWright Conference 2007 in Orlando. Ms. Peluso’s opening comment was [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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