TravelMole Interview: David Jones, Travelink
Travelink managing director David Jones believes the big four travel companies in the UK will keep moving away from the traditional bucket and spade market to more niche holidays.
The UK-based tour operator systems provider has recently signed a £250,000 five year contract with adventure specialist Travelbag Adventures. And Mr Jones believes that companies with offerings such as Travelbag are the way ahead for the big four, which he says can only be good news for his company because of the complicated nature of their technology requirements.
Mr Jones explained: “If you are going to Ayia Napa, there’s not a lot to it. You get on a flight, get on a coach and arrive at a hotel then do it all in reverse.”
But he pointed out that the needs of an operator like Travelbag were more complicated: “A lot of their clients travel on their own and room share. A 16 year old girl doesn’t want to be sharing with a 50 year old bloke. What they had to do before was a lot of manual administration, we’ve eliminated much of that. And the complexity of the work we have done for Travelbag shows we can do it for larger companies.”
According to Mr Jones the big travel companies have switched on the fact that specialist holidays equal higher profits – he pointed to First Choice’s ownership of Exodus and Trek America, and Thomas Cook’s Cultura brand.
He said: “The big four have realised that things are changing. In the past year they’ve not managed to make money selling charter holidays. If you’ve committed a plane for a year and then there’s an Iraq war or a SARS it works out very expensive to have it sitting on a runway.”
Mr Jones said the contract was separate to that recently announced between Dolphin and Datalex. “They are dealing with the travel agency side, we are dealing with the tour operating arm. They are separate parts of the business.”
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