Travel UCD hopes to capture SME market

A travel technology consultancy says it is filling a gap in the market with its “affordable” online distribution solution for smaller agents and operators.

The solution, called TourCMS enables agents and operators to get product online and distribute through other sales channels at a cost of £400 a year.

Alex Bainbridge is behind the product. He is chief executive of Travel UCD, a consultancy that specialises in travel and hospitality website design and usability. He told TravelMole: “Many agents and operators can’t afford the base level price of systems that other companies provide.”

He added: “If you look at 4,000 tour operators in the UK, only 300 of them are on Viewdata.”

TourCMS allows operators to display their content on other agents and distributors websites. Mr Bainbridge told TravelMole: “The primary business driver for the operator or agent taking TourCMS is to manage content on their website and a side effect, because they now have more control over content is that it can be easily transported to other agents or distribution channels.”

When a customer shows interest in the operator’s product when it is displayed on an agents website, they are directed to the operators own website to get more information.

“This is particularly important to specialist tour operators as the chances are the customer will want to ask very specific questions when it comes to something like a diving holiday or hiking tour. These questions are best put to the tour operator as it is not something the travel agent will necessarily know”, said Mr Bainbridge.

He added: “But the booking is tracked to ensure that the commission will go to the agent for creating the booking.”

But the licence fee to TourCMS, which covers one domain name, is not the only cost involved. Agents and operators will also need to pay for hosting, which is usually around £200 to £300 per year, and may wish to opt for support as well. If this is provided by Travel UCD it costs either £500 per year for email support and £2,500 for telephone and 24-hour support.

The first customers for TourCMS is First48. Director Ralph Foulds told TravelMole: “We were looking for some way to streamline the way we handle our bookings and TourCMS has delivered. We are already thinking of a second installation for a second domain name.”

First48 has been using the system for about six months. Mr Foulds said it took about two weeks for a designer to upload the content into the new website. He hopes it will enable the operator to boost sales through agents.

“We have a target to sell 40% of small group departures through travel agents by 2005, which would have been very difficult to achieve with our old system because it limited the number of agents we used”, said Mr Foulds.

Tour CMS also offers marketing tracking. For each booking it will show where it was generated, such as a magazine advert, through a search engine or by an agent. The solution also incorporates RSS, something that Mr Bainbridge thinks will revolutionise the way customers are kept up to date with special offers. He said: “RSS bypasses internet or email to automatically update customers when new information from a ‘tagged’ website is available.”