Agents facing increasing threat from Internet

Business Travel Show 2004 Special: Business agents have been warned they face an increasingly tough battle to cling onto their clients as websites continue to develop. Cheapflights chief executive David Soskin said the internet was now “coming of age” and will pose a growing threat to conventional Travel Management Companies. Small and medium size businesses in particular could well ditch their agents in favour of booking travel arrangements by themselves over the web. Speaking during a seminar on the future of TMC’s at the Business Travel Show in London, Mr Soskin said: “The market is changing and will continue to change. A lot of websites were slow and clumsy but even in the past year they have improved enormously. The internet is coming of age now and won’t go away. “Small and medium size businesses are in the ascendancy and I believe the internet is a becoming a much better solution for these companies who are price sensitive and need to control costs. “The internet provides transparency, does not rely on a third party and in an industry where prices change rapidly, can display the latest fares directly.” Mr Soskin then issued a warning to agents that only by providing high quality advice will they survive. “When it comes to advice or arranging complex travel arrangements for multi-national companies, websites can’t compete,” he said. “But those TMC’s who don’t adopt new technology and cannot offer discounts or advice will wither and die.” Guild of Business Travel Agents chairman Richard Lovell, who is also Carlson Wagonlit’s EMEA vice president, told delegates that the role as a conventional agent – booking tickets and reserving hotel rooms – vanished years ago. “We are now information based travel managers,” said Mr Lovell. Among the key tasks was analysing in detail their clients travelling needs and negotiating best deals with airlines, hotels and car hire companies – something websites struggle to do. “For example, we are having to increasingly make comparisons between rail and air transport on both a time and cost basis,” said Mr Lovell. In a security-conscious age, companies are also anxious about their employees travelling overseas and need help from agents. “When an incident occurs, clients want to know immediately how many staff they have overseas, who is due to fly there, which hotels they are staying in. We have a system that supplies that information within 30 minutes,” said Mr Lovell. “This is increasingly important in a litigious society where they could find themselves sued by their employees.” Report by Steve Jones