TravelMole Interview: Vic Darvey, OTC
On the anniversary of September 11, Online Travel Corporation sales director Vic Darvey tells TravelMole how online agents have bounced back from the atrocities that shook up the industry.
“The advantage of being an online, as opposed to an ‘off-line’ agent is that we don’t rely on brochures – so our pricing is dynamic, making us more competitive. We can load special offers onto the website within a day,” says Mr Darvey.
“Most airlines dropped their fares after September 11 to try to boost demand, and the best way to distribute these fares was through the internet.
“From our perspective we have seen a complete recovery after September 11. I think online agents were the first to benefit when travel picked up. The same goes for this year. May was our second biggest month this year after January, and this is because of pent-up demand after the war and Sars.”
Mr Darvey says that the current move by people to supplement their main holiday with a number of short breaks has also benefitted online agents like OTC.
“We are putting together packages of flights and hotels that are discounted, so we pass this saving onto the consumer. It is net product so we control the mark-up – we are selling most of our packages at a 20-25% mark-up.”
According to Mr Darvey, in the last quarter OTC was taking 31% of all transactions through its self-packaging program, Build Your Own. This is up from 25% in the previous quarter.
OTC is aiming to push BYO bookings to 50% in the next financial year. He says that moving away from selling flight only has also protected OTC from the recent bout of commission cutting. “Airlines have restructured by cutting commissions and that has affected how they sell flights. We have not been impacted as severely as some agents because more and more of our revenue doesn’t rely on selling flight only.”
As it approaches the main city break season, Mr Darvey is positive. In August sales through onlinetravel.com increased by 96% year-on-year.
Mr Darvey says that despite the incentives offered to people to book online, the call centre still receives a lot of calls. “Some people just want to speak to someone when they book,” he says.
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