Ancillary sales ‘lost’ through agents
Airlines are reluctant to sell through third party agents because they lose control of increasingly pivotal ancillary sales, TravelMole’s travel industry question time heard.
Opodo UK country manager Neil Mott, who previously worked for easyjet, American Airlines and Go, said non-core product was of paramount importance for carriers.
While easyjet had taken a “passive” interest in third party sales, others, like Ryanair, do not want to know, he said.
“Ryanair are making increasing profits through ancillary sales and when you sell through third parties you’ve lost control of those sales,” said Mott. “Therein lies the problem.”
But he said easyjet was beginning to embrace the trade and had “turned a blind eye” to screen-scrapping and to agents who add a mark-up on their flights.
Thomsonfly commercial director Guy Stephenson said it was important to “capture the customer”.
“And you can’t do that when you go through third parties,” he told the debate. “You can’t capture customer details and or upsell and we’ve been looking to maximise our opportunities to upsell to our customer base.”
Report by Steve Jones
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