Agents slow to experiment with new technology
When some 500 delegates attending the Abacus International Conference in Ho Chi Minh City this week were asked how many of them were using mobile phone and social media strategies to grow their businesses, only a very small number raised their hands.
Those travel agents that were holding back, wary of embracing and experimenting with new technologies, risked becoming irrelevant, they were told.
The convergence of strongly growing Asian economies, the use of the Internet to make retail purchases (54.5 percent of Internet users visit an e-retail site) and the rapid growth of smart phone sales in Asia Pacific, would provide huge opportunities for agents to pursue business,” said Abacus CEO, Robert Bailey.
“The mobile opportunities cannot be ignored and travel is just at the start of this opportunity," he said.
Bailey said social media was another opportunity for agents to improve the visibility of their business, drive users to their sites and enhance the customer experience.
“There is a lot of fear, a lot of froth around social media but with three quarters of all Internet users on social media, agents have to embrace it, they have to experiment with it.”
Bailey said the travel industry was traditionally conservative and not early adopters of new technology. Plus, in Asia, the service culture was more based on offline, personal relationships.
However, he warned, that the pace of adoption of new technology by consumers was so great that agents “better experiment now before you are no longer relevant”.
Abacus said it is working hard to create cheap white label solutions for agents including WebCreate and WebStart, which enables an agency to provide online fare search and reservation capability with minimum effort and cost.
Ian Jarrett
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