Previously on “Lost”, we saw the Travel Agent who had been caught in a time warp constantly making the same mistake over and over again. (With apologies for the use of certain Americanisms in this piece).
Timothy O’ Neil Dunne: Reluctance by traditional offline agents to use online tools.
In one of the Day 1 sessions at WIT’s Little Big 10 Conference, Martin Symes (pictured below left) of Abacus ran a panel entitled “Offline to Online: The Great Migration”. I felt that once again there was a lot of window dressing to some of the core problems that challenge this migration. It gave me time to think about how well or badly traditional off line agents are handling online.
In all brutal honesty – there is still a reluctance to use the various online tools. That reluctance is driven by several factors.
- The lack of good products and services that are available to the Travel Agency Community.
- The traditional GDS incentive programmes that provide a lock to older technologies
- Agents don’t know how to establish better “digital relationships” both upstream (to the supplier community) and downstream (to the client community).
- The education quotient of travel agencies.
In Asia this is far less of a factor than in the First and second world markets of North America and Western Europe. Being a younger market and one that has embraced digital technologies faster and more completely we can see that despite some of the challenges listed above – travel agents are persevering.
In the APAC region we also have the anomaly of one of the most profitable travel intermediaries. Yes – Flight Centre, a public company based in Australia really doesn’t have a large digital footprint. Skroo Turner – their indomitable CEO – has made it plain that while he appreciates the digital transformation, the customer service aspects and complexity of travel does not lend itself to online vs the traditional agency selling processes.
Are we doomed therefore to this time warp over and over again like “Groundhog Day”?
Actually I am quite encouraged. The APAC region will embrace NDC as an open standard for airline ecommerce. Other technologies and local market capabilities will make the region better able to migrate to online or better in my view to OMNICHANNEL.
Martin Symes
Firstly despite the challenges, travel agents have come to adopt non- supplier or traditional tools to communicate downstream with their clients. However, corporate travel tools are universally (IMHO) bad in every market. No one does a good job in providing an easy way to book a Corporate Travel trip.
Secondly who can do more to enable the migration? Abacus as the Asian-focused GDS has eschewed many of the products from its technology parent Sabre in favour of local products which are largely digital. Thus an agent based in the APAC region can do more than say his US or European counterpart can do. The explosion of LCC airlines in the region and the high percentage of non-GDS based airlines has forced the agencies to adapt to a more heterogeneous environment.
For the future, I believe we will see that China and India will drive change in their markets as they have less legacy to support. China remains constrained for agents who must use Travelsky to access their airlines but they do have the benefit of ubiquity since every airline (almost) is available through the system.
This is despite the challenge of the mainframe based GDS being less functional than say Abacus. Both country markets, where price dominates as the determining factor of choice in air fare product, will see more and more capability for the agent. Also the agents will adapt in their use of consumer facing tools from the other players in the market like the Metasearch companies.
Bottom line for me – I am still of the opinion that the agency channel needs to up its game for the use of digital technologies and this means it cannot rely on the GDSs alone to supply them. I believe too that some of the innovations being proposed need to have greater consideration of the importance of the agency channel.
For the APAC market I think we will get there – albeit eventually. For other markets particularly in the USA and Western Europe, I am not so encouraged. Blame for this should sit squarely on those who have fought tooth and nail to restrain the agents with outmoded tools and business processes. Don’t worry, they know who they are.
