Agents Change or Perish!

Industry consultant and TA Fastrack CEO, Adrian Caruso says that Flight Centre’s privatisation is a signal to all travel agents (big or small) that they ‘must’ constantly keep reinventing themselves or perish over the next five years.

Adrian told The Mole, “Travel agents should be carefully watching changing consumer behaviour, especially the growth of online activity,” addings, “Travel agents need to keep re-inventing the way they do business with their customers and be able to respond consumer trends and this includes providing an on-line channel for customers who prefer to book in this way and being in consumers faces more than ever.”

“Consumers are being offered countless methods of booking their travel and are more than ever being bombarded with travel offers everyday from non-traditional travel retailers,” adding, “Travel agents need to offer all the various methods of booking travel and market to them like there is no tomorrow to build relationships.”

Adrian said, “Agents need to start investing in customer relationship management (CRM) and customer loyalty programmes, to help retain existing customers who represent the majority of enquiries and bookings.”  “Most travel agents do not keep a database on customer needs and preferences and this almost certainly means many cross-sell opportunities are being ignored and profitable business is lost to the competition.”

Another area of opportunity identified by his meetings and research is better staff development i.e. placing more focus on re-training agents and rewarding up-selling and cross selling, with Adrian saying “When making airline bookings, it’s clear that the successful agents are also cross-selling other travel components such as transfers, car hire, hotels, rail tickets and insurance.”  “Training also needs to focus on fine-tuning customer relationship skills, sales skills and destination knowledge”.

Adrian also recently visited Asia where he studied the operations of several key franchise and independent retail travel chains, adding that in terms of process, automation levels need to be addressed especially activities such as the booking procedure itself, filing, booking confirmation, travel documentation and billing, saying “I saw in Asia that the more successful agents were devoting their time to front office issues such as cross selling, up-selling and customer relationships, as opposed to being swamped by back office administration.”

Finally, he said that travel agents should regard rent as a percentage of overall operating costs and consider re-investing in efficient technology, marketing and websites rather than expensive retail locations, saying “Travel agents really need to think about where they want to be located in the next couple of years based on the current consumer buying trends, with the desire to be located in prime districts being a legacy from when most customer enquiries were handled face-to-face”.

In a similar visit to the United States and Canada 12 months ago Adrian noticed that most travel agents in these countries were located in off-street locations paying lower rents and they all specialised in a particular niche and relied heavily on direct marketing and the Web to bring in new business.

Report by The Mole from Adrian Caruso