The TravelMole Interview: Lawrence Hunt, Rapid Travel Solutions
Rapid Travel Solutions managing director Lawrence Hunt has told TravelMole that he would be “petrified” to be heading one of the big tour operations in the current climate.
Mr Hunt said that while he thought that the market was slowly returning following the downturn caused by the September 11 terrorist attacks, he believed the overall trend was away from package holidays and towards independent travel. He said: “There is a slow recovery but the big thing is people are switching away from package holidays. If I was running a big tour operator I would be petrified by developments like the low cost carriers. The problem is they have these huge operations with fixed inventories, aircraft and cruise ships and they haven’t got a flexible enough cost base.”
However Mr Hunt added that it was not all doom and gloom for the industry. He pointed out, for example, that BT’s announcement earlier this week that it was to cut the cost of broadband internet access was a step in the right direction. He said: “I get very frustrated with the travel industry’s lethargy and inability to exploit new technology quickly so anything that helps the take up of new platforms and makes them more affordable for agents is good news. It is currently very hard for the customer going into the travel agent to get a rich experience. In terms of information they get a brochure which they could have got 20 years ago or information from viewdata that was also around 20 years ago.”
Speaking on the importance of the deal Rapid has recently signed with lastminute.com, Mr Hunt said: “From Rapid’s point of view we only take on three or four major deals in a year because we don’t provide mass market software we provide very integrated specific customer solutions. They are not our largest customer by a long way but it is a significant deal.”
Mr Hunt declined to comment on rumours of a possible takeover of X-Tant by Rapid parent company Telewest or on speculation that Rapid is about to sign a major deal with another online company.
See our previous stories:
25 Feb 2002: Rapid secures lastminute.com technology deal
07 Feb 2002: <A
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