Posts Tagged leisure travel
Luton Out of All Proportion?
Posted by murray in Latest News on July 5th, 2010
Being an agent, I have to organise travel on many different levels. Sometimes first class, sometimes business, sometimes leisure. In the space of a telephone call, I can go from “best there is” to “cheap as chips”, from long haul to short, from a simple there-and-back to a complicated itinerary of 15 or more flight sectors. Each booking needs the same amount of attention to detail, not to mention a certain mental agility with regard to tarvel planning, unique to travel agents.
Over the years, there have been many changes to air travel arrangements. The most relevant of which being the arrival of the low cost carrier. Althougth this arrival has brought cheap(er) air travel to the masses, for those that were used to the days of “get in early for a reasonable fare” – some changes have not been so wellcome.
In times past, if anything, you knew where you stood. To get a cheaper fare, you travelled over a weekend, you booked in advance. For a business person going to Europe, out on a Monday, back on a Tuesday, the best that he or she could hope for was a Eurobudget. We knew how much baggage we could take, we knew we would “get something on the ‘plane” and generally speaking, life went on. This all had to change. I don’t know the reason why, but it did.
Low cost airlines did not march over every airlines route map. They specialised in short haul stuff, holiday routes and in the case of RyanAir, opened up new routes that had never existed before. Despite this, the legacy airlines decided that they wanted a go at the low cost ethos – but for all the wrong reasons. Legacy airlines saw this simply as an opportunity to harvest more revenue and reduce such things as on-board service, without stopping to think about why people travelled with them in the first place – and one of the main reasons being that many passengers simply did not want the “low cost” ethos!
But that is not what I am on about, here. I want to talk about “proportionality”. What do I mean? This morning, I took my daughter to Luton Airport for the “… Where you truly whisked here from Paradise – Naaaah, Luton Airport” treatment. A trip to Palma. This trip had come about simply because a client had over 100 kilos of luggage and the easiest (and cheapest way, in this instance) was for the client to travel with 50 kilos and for her to go along with another 50, have a swim and a day in Palma and come home.
My first observation was that a luggage trolley cost £2. Now, certain low cost airlines will fly you to some places for 1 Euro. So, how can you pay 1 Euro for a flight and £2 (or 2 Euros) for a luggage trolley? Where is the “proportionality” in that? To put it another way, given the present £12 promotion of RyanAir, the cost of a trolley is 17% of the airfare. If you want to bypass the security queue another £3 and the minimum at the car park to see No1 daughter safely away £4.50. A total of 80% of the fare. There is more cost involved in using Luton Airport than in the cost of getting from Luton to Alicante. And do not forget that hidden in the cost of your ticket, under “taxes and charges” is the £8 UB tax – which is, basically, what you have already paid Luton Airport for, well, the privilege of using Luton Airport. This makes the cost of simply using Luton Airport more than some fares from Luton Airport.
I don’t know about you, but I like finality on pricing. I want to buy something or a service that does a job and in an ideal world, be able to then use that service without having to put my hand in my pocket every five minutes. There are things I know I will need – like a car park – but those should be at a fair cost, given that I have already paid, in my fare, an element for the use of the airport. Technically, I suppose, the airline has paid the airport for the use of that airport and that charge, presumably, should pay for their passengers to use that airport – UB tax is for Passenger Service Charge – and by all accounts, if the ramblings of airlines using Luton are correct, Luton manages to cook up some nice charges for their ‘planes to use the airport. £2 is a lot for a trolley. Why should I have to pay – why would I need to pay – £3 to bypass a queue? Should not the airport provide enough staff that daft length queues do not arise? Further, though Easyjet staff are, in my opinion, well trained and respectful – how does Luton manage to find, for their staff, the most irritable and bad tempered people around?
This is what I mean about proportionality, or to put it another way, that airports, specifically Luton, need to get their snouts out of the trough.
Travolution Summit – Really!
Posted by murray in Latest News on April 20th, 2010
Reading through the tweets that have come along all day, courtesy of various people attending this “high-tech” summit, one has to stifle a bit of a yawn. It’s not that the stuff coming out is not valid, some of it is interesting – the thing is, that it is in the forum of this “thing of tomorrow” summit arena – and what seems to get many excited is stuff that traditional high street agents have known all along.
Take the statement from Frommers about pictures being most important and video not so important. The Director of Frommers, no doubt, felt like he was talking to his Year 6 class. This is why traditional agents liked brochures (I am talking pre-universal-internet, here) – and still do. We have known this all along, that pictures count. We also knew that people rarely, if ever, use videos – or CD’s – as witness the number of dusty video tapes that used to adorn some forgotton backwater of any agents shop. Yet, this information was picked up by nearly all and re-tweeted ad nauseam. We traditional agents knew that, tell us something we don’t know.
Then people ask about the silver market and are people missing out. Well in the on-line world, they may be; here again, the traditional agents sigh: Yes, we know about that – actualy, traditional agents know quite a bit more than that – they pursue all markets – hard (we have to) – if a client has money and an agent can get it off them – he or she will. We have heard it all before, the pink market was another one (late to mid 90’s, I believe).
Then again, the Bing bloke says that 25% of searches go straight to the back button, back to the search page. Reflecting on this, I can only assume that Bing is not very good at producing search results, if people have to have another go …. perhaps what one is looking for, is on page 3.
“41% of cruises were booked by Daily Mail readers”, thunders another. Really? You believe that? Without so much as a by-your-leave, this nugget is picked upon, without any form of verification and tweeted, again ad nauseam. These techy types will believe anything. 41% of Daily Mail readers book cruises, possibly. The Daily Mail advertising sales department really scored a hit, there!
Step forward the Bing Bloke for another nugget: It takes 2-4 weeks of research from first search to purchase. Again, if I was Mr Bing, I think I would be a tad more cautious with bandering my weaknesses. Any self respecting high street agent would be upset if it took longer than 20 to 40 minutes from first encounter to a sale. True, we allow people to take the brochure away, but with some well placed advice and good agent guidance, let’s say that we would see our client back in 2 to 4 days. Internet sales types clearly have an awful lot to learn.
Whilst we are on about “too much information” or rather, being careful with what you share – Lawrence Hunt said that lowcosttravel group is the 20th fastest growing business in the UK. Now, no-one in travel wants to hear that. You see, many of us remember other “fast growing” travel groups – let’s start with Court Line, Intasun, Exchange Travel…. Not to mention Xcel and a few others. We, who are really in travel, don’t want “fast growing”. We want to hear the adjectives such as “sensible”, “well-established”, “prudent” and above all, “reliable” – not “fast-growing”. True, there are some of that ilk that we have lost over time, but there will always be some fall out.
There seems to be an issue with many of the speakers and, I fear, those who are sending out the tweets. They clearly must know a lot about technical stuff, about the web – and about re-inventing the wheel – yet many seem to know naff-all about travel.
The Hidden Mysteries…
Posted by murray in Latest News on April 17th, 2010
We have not grasped this at all. Nothing is moving which operates over the height of, say, a double decker bus. If, that is, you can get on one. It is not a question of a later flight, or even tomorrow or even the day after tomorrow. Europe is grounded – and we are all going to stay grounded for a while yet. I have never come across this – even after the calamity of New York, there was something that could be done, we knew, at least, that in a few days time something could be done. Now, we don’t.
There is a great mass of humantity which stretches across the continent of Europe, indeed, of our globe who all wish to be somewhere else and that somewhere else, is home. We cannot, at this stage, even think about starting a new venture.
So what will we discover? Air travel, at best, for anyone who travels cattle class, is a miserable experience. Even before you start, you are faced with long lists of what you cannot do, followed by long queues, followed by more people telling what you cannot do, followed by being confined to your seat, followed by more queues, followed by people assuming that you are hard, psychotic terrorist until you can prove otherwise, followed by…… To get home, you have to do it all again. America is wondering why their tourism is down, airlines wonder the same.
I should add that it is different for the budget airlines – they do exactly what they say on the tin, and no more – we have come to accept that – so for them the issue is not as dire.
Coupled with this, air travel has now demonstrated it’s vulnerabilities. Air travel was always vulnerable to extremes of weather; now it also is vulnerable through strike action, it is vulnerable through acts of terror – now it has shown that it is vulnerable through it’s own technology. Aircraft engines are designed to fly at x thousand feet or they use too much petrol. They are not designed to cope with ash in the high atmosphere – although the famous case of the Jumbo came through, having gone right into an ash cloud – as technology advances, it becomes more sensitive – more fickle, even – we do not realise this until an event such as this occurs – and this is a great failing of technology – it may be clever, but it is not robust. If British Airways had kept a few Vickers Viscounts knocking about the place, many may be able to get home. Think of cars, a battery failure on a modern car means you are stuck – in the old days, you just got out the starting handle.
The increasingly vulnerable nature of air travel coupled with the unpleasant general experience is a poisonous brew. The vulnerabilities may, in some measure, be addressed. The experience – the “holistic travel experience” can be easily dealt with. Airlines, however, choose not to. Indeed, with things like unbundling of fares, they are intent on making that experience even worse.
Then there is the matter of choice. People can choose which airline to fly on and all airlines compete. What may have been missed, is that people may choose simply not to travel, unless absolutely necessary. Worse, it may be the premium traffic that decides not to travel. Not because of cost (though that is an important aspect) simply because it is all simply too much like hard work. What is dangerous for airlines, is that firms may discover that they can manage very well without having people flitting about the place. After all, global business managed to get on before the advent of mass air travel. Firms may decide that a person based at an outpost, with greater executive powers, is a better way of doing things than someone having to go there all the time. An example of this (on a different level, of course!) was British “Gunboat Diplomacy” where decisions were made and actions taken by young naval officers without the benefit of even being able to telephone a higher authority. It actually worked rather well (at the time).
Then we will have the knock on – and for the airline business, this just adds to the cost. Premium traffic can just decide not to travel. Premium traffic has the financial ability to hole up in a nice, comfortable hotel and wait until it is all over, premium traffic has satphones, communications technology, a yacht that it may be able to call on – even a mate with a light aircraft. What airlines have to deal with, when the skies re-open, is us normal people. People on cheap tickets, away with the family, on charter flights, who now have maxed out credit cards, no cash and are sleeping at terminals. Premium traffic does not want to travel in amongst all this – so they wait. Revenue not only falls, but airlines then have to spend money flying with aircraft full of people whom they may even have to pay, rather, compensate, for being on board.
This is not the end, not even the begining of the end. In realising how vulnerable air travel is and by realising how miserable air travel is for many people – and above all, by doing something about those aspects – it may just be the end of the beginning.
Travel Awards? Not today, thank you.
Posted by murray in Latest News on April 14th, 2010
In a former life, I worked for Watneys. The brewers. A cindarella job. “We want you to help look after about 100 tenanted public houses. We wll give you a car and we want you to go round and make sure the beer is up to par” Needless to say, after a year or so, several near misses and a broken marriage, with a lot of help from AA (not the airline) I gave up alcohol. Today, just for today, I am sober.
One of the annual Watney rituals revolved around the (then) Evening Standard “Pub of The Year” award, which accolade, Watneys were keen to have. In order to achieve this accolade, some oik was sent out out, armed with about £10,000 (which was a lot of money in the mid ’80’s) to buy every Evening Standard available so that the voting coupons could be filled in. One year, I remember, the oik duly came back with lorry loads of the paper, only to find that the voting coupon was not in that particular day’s issue!
(Correct) Paper in hand, the office staff were all given instructions which pub to vote for and then all sat down to do their bit.
Ever since that time, I have this rather jaundiced view of award ceremonies. They are all fixed. Indeed (and in all fairness) it would be difficult to police the voting, but fixed they are. Lately, I was looking at the “World Travel Awards” (mainly because someone sent me a “vote for us” email) and was a little surprised to see who won last year. Some of the awards, you think “fair enough” but others?
“Leading City Break Destination” – Lisbon. LISBON?? Think Brussels without the excitement. No mention of Rome, Paris (the most romantic city on earth), Florence, Venice, Prague… “Business Hotel” – Movenpick Istanbul (really!). Now, the Turks have worked hard, because they feature widely – “couples” and “design” resort, “conference” resort and Hey! Even their Tourist Board gets a look in – I wonder how they managed that?
Forte Village Resort won Europe’s Leading Resort – (a “fair enough” – if you can afford it). But “Leading Luxury Hotel” – the “Grand Hotel Europe” in St. Petesburg?? The list goes on (and on, and on…) For any award to be worth something, the award has to be credible. An Olympic Gold Medal (or any Olympic medal) is credible – you have seen it for yourself, it is irrefutable. The George Medal, the Congressional Medal of Honour, the Croix De Guerre… and on a (much lesser) level, the rosette my youngest daughter won at the Gymkhana… they are all credible, they are all honoured and respected – you cannot get one by getting the staff to fill in forms, YOU have to do YOUR bit. On the other side, you can see that travel awards, from various sources and for the reasons mentioned above, are not credible and because they are not credible, they are….. worthless.
Travel award ceremonies are all well and good. They are a useful opportunity to scrub up, for ladies to dust off their posh frocks, to relax and enjoy some good like-minded company, to chew the cud – a drink and a chat, though, that is all they are good for.
Just note this: Please, please, don’t expect me to believe in them…..
Where “Unbundling” Unbundles…
Posted by murray in Latest News on April 9th, 2010
This is the latest thing – “unbundling” – take out all the things you may not want on your flight and then charge for things that are optional. This keeps the fares low – Right?
Not exactly. Fares are regulated by a very pure form of supply and demand. They always have been. As any flight fills up, so the price rises. At which stage, therefore, does it become unreasonable to charge for things that are “extras”?
I have just checked RyanAir for a flight from Luton to Lanzarotte – out on the 11th April back on 15th. At the time of writing I would be charged £59.99 (really, £60) to get there and an eye-watering £239.99 (£240) to get home – total £262.33. I happened to pick RyanAir, but I could have used any airline that is getting their snouts into the unbundling trough. Now, if the “unbundling” theory holds true, really all seats should be, say, £5 and then one can add in all the extras, including the charge if you need air at 32,000 feet – with justification. The thing is, if I have to pay £239.99 rather than £59.99, why should I have to pay all the “extras” on top, still?
This begs the other question – What should the “Man on the Clapham Omnibus” reasonably expect a fare to cover? An aeroplane that goes to the appointed destination, a qualified crew – yes, obviously. Now, with a holiday flight (as Lanzarotte is) why should I not reasonably expect the fare to cover my holiday bag – and given that it is pushing 3 hours or so, a cup if tea, say, a wee even a sandwich (God forbid). Further, and no-one in the airline business seems to want to ask this, would passengers not prefer to pay an extra few quid on their fare in order to have the items mentioned, included? Who says: “Fares must be cheaper than chips”? Answer: No-one. Given that I am paying £239.99 rather than £59.99, I think that I can reasonably expect a few things – Even a “Good morning” and a smile would be a start!
Hotel Misery – Not What You Think!
Posted by murray in Latest News on April 5th, 2010
“Half-price Caribbean” is a headline in the Sunday Times Travel bit. Hotels are discounting and they are discounting early, is the theme for hotels in far flung places.
The question is, is it really the “recession” which is causing hotels the problem? Interestingly, it is noted, that prices for a hotel room in places such as Rome, Amsterdam, Barcelona and other European places have actually risen by as much as 9 if not 13%. I wonder why!
There is another reason why hotels in certain places are suffereing – and it has nothing to do with any recession, perceived or otherwise. It is simply this: The actual experience of getting to these hotels, for many, is so traumatic that they just can’t be bothered to go at all.
This would also neatly explain why European cities are enjoying room night price increases. If you live in the UK you do not have to fly to get to Amsterdam. If you live in, say, Germany, you do not have to fly to get to Rome. You can drive, you can let the train take the strain – hell, you can even get a coach.
Air travel is no longer a pleasure – especially to those countries which really, really give you a hard time getting in (such as America). You are treated like something the cat dragged in by most airlines and treated the same way by the immigration authorities of many countries. Now, we all respect that they want to know that you are not a homicidal maniac bent on global domination or determined to fly an aeroplane into a tall building, but we do have the technology to check these things and they can be checked with a smile, a “Good Morning”; more treating people innocent until proven gulity rather than the other way around. As Churchill once said “If you have to shoot someone, it costs nothing to be polite”.
So, “long haul” hotels, if they wish to improve their occupancy, should club together and try and do something about getting to an from their locations. Work with immigartion authorities and airlines to try an improve the “holistic holiday experience” .
Seems to me, they are barking up the wrong beach!
Shed a Tear For Fontenla-Novoa…. Not!
Posted by murray in Latest News on April 3rd, 2010
Oh, Boo-hoo! Poor old Fontenla-thingy (why can’t he just change his name to Smith?) is upset because RyanAir have trodden on his toes. “Unfair Subsidies” erm… “It’s appalling. I’m shocked” erm.. Perhaps what he should have said is “Oh Dear, Michael O’Leary is better at this than I am”.
True to form, our beloved (travel) trade press provides us with it’s incisive anaylsis “What can the Canary Islands have been thinking of…” thunders Lucy Huxley of Travel Weakley. Well, what they were thinking of is, I would suggest, that they (the Canaries) have a good opportunity to build traffiic during the off peak season, when the Charter outfits can’t hang the punters out to dry and so stop flying.
To suggest that RyanAir’s clients do not spend much money at resort is banal – after all – who are the people on cheap (ish) charter package holidays, anyway? I mean, Gran Canaria airport is not exactly packed out with private jets, now, is it? Perhaps RyanAir clients prefer to spend the money on themselves (ie in resort) rather than on travelling from A to B.
Michael O’Leary is, if anything, a go-getter. He negotiates. Hard. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. This trail-blazing style has produced, arguably, Europe’s most successful airline. What Fontenla-thingy doesn’t like is that O’Leary is better than he. Michael O’Leary has achieved deals that Fontenla could only dream about, runs an airline better than anyone else and achieves results better than anyone else. That’s the nub of all the fuss. So, Fontenla-Thingy, (and Air France/ KLM, for that matter) stop bleating and get on with the job.
Amazingly, Thommy Cook says that they will shift capacity elsewhere. Hmmm. I don’t suppose thinking first about if anyone actually wants to go “there” may be a prime consideration. Why not take a leaf out of Michael O’Leary’s book? Look around for something new. This single statement, about simply “shifting capacity” marks a single failure of legacy (and apparently, now, charter) airlines – and may mark what could be Fontenla’s downfall – the inability to seek out the new; the need to rely on shifting around amongst the (preceived-as-safer) old.
Watch and learn, watch and learn….
Bored with Bright Spark “Summits”
Posted by murray in Latest News on April 3rd, 2010
Ho Hum! Travolution have a “stellar” line up of “world class” speakers for their annual travel summit. Great (yawn) I think I have some paint that I need to watch drying.
There
is one exception, that is – Michael Portillo. He would be worth listening to, it’s just a pity he is the moderator. So, why are these types of events, well… rubbish?
Travel needs to move forward, that is, we need to think of new innovations and how the industry as a whole can improve, given the present economic climate, the way things are going in travel etc etc. So, who do we have talking on this occasion? The phoney pharoh sends his top man. Yup, well, given that he runs arguably the worlds top shop, it is not difficult to see why he is there – but that’s just it – he runs the top shop. He didn’t create it – and if profits fall just a tad, someone else will have his job. We have a splattering of people who run big outfits (just at this present time) Orange, Expedia etc – Again, they are not the creators, not the people who had that initial flash of inspiration, they are just the people who happen to be steering the thing pro-tem, not the engineers who did the “original thinking” bit.
The same may be said for people from Disney and the others. It’s easy to sit and pontificate, to hold everyone in awe – but what real credentials do these people have for holding people in such awe? None, I would suggest. They hold people in awe the same way a car, with headlights full on, at night, holds a rabbitt motionless in it’s path. There is the Amadeus bloke – what is he doing there? Master of a reservation system that takes things out so you have to constantly put things back in again. A Director (passing) (again) of TUI travel, yup, another mechanic – where is the engineer? And of all people, someone from the stupidly-named “Bing” (as in “If this doesn’t work we’ll just chuck another few hundred thousand dollars at something else and see if that does”) – travel.
So, where are the big thinkers? Where are tomorrows entrepreneurs, tomorrow’s people? The people who are banging away, at present, trying to find the answer to tomorrow? Where are the people from the trenches?
I want to hear about the future, not about the past – I want to hear from a visionary, from an entrepreneur – not some passing functionary.
Well, That Just About Sums it Up For Travel…
Posted by murray in Latest News on June 5th, 2009
Now everyone really has lost the plot. Credit card companies have decided that the best way to get their money back, after a tour company collapses, is by simply re-charging whoever sold the holiday in the first place. In other words, you buy a holiday from Expedia or even Joe Blogs Travel and the tour company goes up the Swanny, the punter gets his money back from the card company who in turn recharges the travel agent. As that Meerkat would say, “Simple, Huh?”
Not quite. Agents are not mega-rich people who have fistfulls of cash floating about the place. Secondly, in case anyone hadn’t noticed, they are agents. That is, they flog the holiday and pick up (hopefully) a (small) commission as a result. Recharge any agent for a couple of £5,000 holidays and you will simply bankrupt every agent in existence. Overnight.
Coupled with this assault on an already fragile sector of the industry, IATA is thinking about taking money every two weeks rather then monthly. The agent will barely get enough time to get the money off the client before airlines, operators, Uncle Tom Cobbly and all are jumping up and down like startled rabbits demanding the agent pays over everything they have including two pints of blood and a small mortgage “just in case”.
Trust has gone with the agency system (I hate the term “model”, let’s deal with the real thing). In any shape or form, online or offline.
Decisions need to be made and the most fundamental one is if airlines and operators wish to distribute through any – and I mean any – kind of agency type arrangement. It matters not if they are on or offline.
What benefits do travel agents, of any ilk offer? Without them, you have to do it yourself. Large operators have the ability to do this and so too would major airlines – at least those airlines that see the UK as a main market. Airlines do have an issue. They do not want to pay for distribution, but at the same time do not want to have to incur the cost of doing it themselves. Legacy airlines view the Easyjets of this world with envy. Easyjet manages to sell their product almost exclusively online; but then again you can do that with a simple and restricted product range that does not need to interact with anything or anyone else. This is not the case with legacy airlines – or indeed, any airline which has a global network – or anything resembling a network, for that matter. As soon as you need to interact, there must be a mechanism to do this and the GDS booking method does this very well. Over time, airlines have, however, lost the ability to network well. They have drawn in their horns and really only want to sell their own product; or at best, their alliances’ product. Fine, perhaps, if you are in the Star Alliance or Skyteam – but Oneworld? BA has no-one left to interact with on anything remotely resembling a “world class” alliance.
The trouble is, when airlines are required to interact, unless an agent can accomplish some tidy footwork, these are invariably for big ticket journeys – valuable top level income which airlines really do need at this time. So, legacy airlines do not want to do the fiddly stuff, they do not want to pay agents to do it and they want the money for it yesterday – but they desperately need this top level income. They want their cake and they want to eat it.
Large tour operators have a love/ hate relationship with agents. Some, such as Thomson, have their own de facto chain of shops and have the resources to “train” staff (ie teach them how to flog their product over anyone else’s). But even Thomson are not TESCO – they do not have a shop every so many miles, so they need to cover the gaps – and the agent does this job for them. Like airlines, however, they do not want to pay for this distribution. Smaller operators are the one group who do use agents and do pay them for referring business; the trouble is, all the small operators together, do not provide a wide enough offering to pay for and maintain a high street presence. The small operator can go online, yet here he faces the issue of reach and exposure; if one is a small operator offering mainstream resorts, then the cost of getting noticed on the internet can run into many, many thousands of pounds.
Now, let’s layer onto the above, the issues of bonding, regulation and now, the cost of even being able to take money off a client. The point is, no-one is going to sell something if they cannot make a reasonable return. Brewers tried this long ago – instead of saying “you pay a low rent and we make money by selling you beer” they said “That property is worth £5mill and we want 10% return from you – You can do what you like” Result: No pubs. Reason: Because there is only so much available in any one transaction. Each person can have a portion of that pie, but as soon as the dominant party wants someone else’s share, the system collapses.
The other reason agents are useful, is because they are retailers. They sell stuff and they sell in volume. The likes of Expedia and Travelocity sell travel and travel products. They are good at it, it is their speciality. AMEX sell business travel (so do I – Plug, plug – and my fees or low ‘cos I have a low cost base!!) they are good at it, they know what the customer likes and understands the customers needs. British Midland, say, run airline services – that is what they are good at. But wholesalers and especially “manufacturers” do not make good retailers – you do not see any DIAGEO shops about, do you? Many airlines have appalling customer service systems, often based in parts foreign, staffed by parrotts or the cheapest humans they can find, with little, if any holistic training. There are airlines, such as BA who have customer service facilities which are excellent, but this is the exception rather than the norm. Most low cost airlines even go as far as to discourage customer contact. The question remains as to how long this style of operation can last.
Agents are a useful intermediary, a foil, twixt client and travel provider. Not all travel, by a long chalk, is simple. Some of it is very complex – not difficult, just complex – so there is a place for “technicians” who have an understanding of how travel works. People who know how part A bolts onto part B. Yes, tour companies and airlines could do this themselves but we come back to the training thing – or rather the total lack of any form of holistic travel training and that no-one with any nounce is going to train themselves for a business that pays rubbish money and shows little if any prospect of real wealth. Ultimately, this leads to “Bankers Syndrome” – as with RBS, one finds that no-one at the top knows anything about Banking. And we all know what happened next, there.
This all leads down a path that leads to a lose-lose situation. As the returns get less, there are increased attempts by various bodies to regulate. More regulation leads to greater cost on the on hand and so even less return on the other, a deep spiral that so encourages the darker side – and with the presence of the internet meaning that one can distribute on a global scale with virtual anonimity – it is easy for this dark unregulated side to take over. Large operators lose their incremental sales and airlines lose their ability to market their high end products – unless they wish to do everything, and I mean everything, themselves.
So the big question remains and before anyone in the travel industry goes any further, it must be answered: Do travel providers wish to do everything for themselves – or do we retain the off and online agency style distribution system? If the answer is no, then fine – get on with it. If the answer is Yes, then the agency system must be allowed to be profitable – and must have a voice that is respected and acted upon by the suppliers. If things just continue along the same road as now, we will see just a few online retailers and a few high street retailers (probably a combination of both – eg Expedia shops) and these retailers will simply dictate who can sell what, for how much and on what terms. Can’t happen? Well, it has in many other fields – Grocery, for example, or computers or DIY….
Murray’s Competition – Part 1!
Posted by murray in Latest News on May 29th, 2009
Not relevant at all - My eldest at Niagra Falls.
So, let’s put it to the test.
The challenge is to fly around the world for the least amount of money. There are some rules:
1. The trip must include a touchdown in Europe, Middle East, Far East, Africa, Indian sub-continent, Australasia, Northern and Southern Continental America. You can start from where you like, but your start and finish must be at the same airport.
2. The itinerary must be fly-able. For example, if you connect from a legacy carrier to a low-cost carrier, the connection must be practical.
3. Backtracking and anything else is allowed.
4. There is no time limit, but extra points awarded for the fastest trip.
Prizes – we need some. So would any airline or hotel group who would like to contribute some free flights or hotel nights, please let me know. Now would be good. So, won’t cost you any money just some flights and hotel nights! And a lot of Twitter/ Social Networking promotion.
These are the basics. So, before we launch away, if anyone has any comments suggestions or tweaks, let me know now. The prize, by the way, would be for the cheapest workable itinerary – you don’t actually have to fly it (unless an airline will sponsor such a prize!)
