Agents need to develop competencies in online space

The recent purchase of Worldspan by Galileo’s parent company, Travelport, will enable Galileo’s customers to access the best of the combined companies’ resources and relationships, says Simon Nowroz, Managing Director of Galileo Asia (pictured).

The addition of Worldspan to Galileo solutions will result in growth and efficiency from seamlessly-integrated technology, knowledge and experience of people in the travel community. We envision that aggregation of real-time data from global travel market intelligence and travel trends will encourage productivity where buyers and sellers can communicate in ways they have never before,” he told Travelmole Asia.

He called it a “year of real progress” for the company, with double digit, year-on-year growth.
“Overall, Asia has been a success story for us this year in terms of sales performance and continuing high levels of customer satisfaction. We are fully committed to ongoing improving of products and services to give our customers the competitive edge. Our outlook is positive – disappointment is not in our vocabulary.
“In Asia, we categorise the market into Super Growth (India and China), Emerging markets (Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, etc) and Mature Growth markets (HKG, SIN, etc) and all three categories have shown strong growth during the first half of 2007.”

Commenting on the continuing growth in the online travel space, he said Galileo was encouraging its travel agent customers to actively strategise around how to capture their fair share of this critical growth sector.

However, securing online market share required a new set of competencies such as creating an intuitive user interface (customers being able to effectively navigate the agents web pages), search capabilities on the site (being able to find data on products and services in a timely manner), integration to other agency applications (mid and back office handoffs and efficiency), driving traffic to the agency site (mailing lists, CRM and SEO and ensuring enough potential customers visit the site) and delivery or fulfillment (electronic vs physical).

Galileo launched a number of new products this year including its wholesale and consolidator platform “Galileo Reach”, expanded the rollout of its travel agency loyalty scheme “Galileo Rewards” and is continuing to refresh the desktop environment with the launch and rollout of “Galileo Desktop v2.0, which provides the agent with improved integration with the latest version of Windows OS. It has also continued adding new functionality and content to our GDS

Nowroz singled out a few trends which were dominating the online travel space – online payment remains an issue, being able to sell point-to-point, particularly domestic traffic, is a good indicator of early success, advertising and creating awareness remain predictors of early success and ground product remains an easy category of travel products to sell online.

Commenting on another trend that was changing the travel landscape, low cost airlines, Nowroz said that fundamentally, LCCs had created an alternative distribution channel for their products, serving as a catalyst for change.

“The LLC distribution model rests on low touch, minimal value add and high efficiencies, whilst the traditional agency distribution model was constructed around high touch, maximum value add and, generally, low efficiencies.

“With the sheer passenger volumes LLCs now carry, agents will need to re-invent their model. However, they should be careful not to simply emulate the LLC model as agents sell more than just LCC products. Where we see successful agents is where the agency has been able to carve out a unique position for itself and isn’t simply copying the LCC model.”

And he said that while long haul, low cost carriers have yet to really establish themselves as they haven’t achieved a critical mass in terms of passengers carried, he does not expect their impact to be widely different from that of the short haul LCCs.