TC turns agents into ‘partners’
Thomas Cook-owned UP Trips claims agents can benefit from using the technology it has developed to boost its online direct sell channels. On the one hand the operator hopes to boost direct sell through websites such as Club 18-30, by offering sophisticated technology that enables customers to package breaks of any length as well as buying the seven and 14-night packages offered online. While on the other hand, UP Trips says it hope to help agents by enabling them to benefit from the same technology. The dynamic packaging solution was initially developed by UP Trips to power Flexibletrips and roomsandhotels.com, and more recently was employed on the Club 18-30 website. It is now being made available to agents and operators, and is already used by 20 “partners”. According to UP Trips managing director, Andy Tidy, the greatest benefit of the technology is that it enables customers and agents to search for a holiday under any criteria, and package together individual components to build a fully bonded holiday. Commenting on the technology he said: “The beauty of it all is that this delivers incremental bookings to our traditional distribution channels, encouraging new sales while having no detrimental impact on our core business.” UP Trips is offering a tailored technology product to agents and operators, varying from a complete “white label” website with direct feeds into Up Trips inventory via an XML link, to an affiliate scheme that places a link to an UP Trips website on an agency website and offers a commission to agents that generate sales. Mr Tidy was speaking at last week’s TTI Spring Conference, which tackled the issue of dynamic packaging. The outcome of the event was that agents must look to adopt dynamic packaging technology and cannot continue to rely on commissions from suppliers and tour operators. Report by Ginny McGrath
Ginny McGrath
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