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Fire your agent?
John Frenaye is not a travel agent but he owns an agency in Maryland. And his advice, while simple, might also be startling:
“Fire your travel agent.”
Actually, what he proposes is not as simple as that, but he made the point in a recent editorial that there are situations where customers do not need a travel agent, such as when a traveler is completing a simple itinerary or is very net-savvy.
“But there are also times when you almost must use travel agents,” he told TravelMole.
He estimates, for example, that someone going on a cruise will make upwards of a dozen phone calls for information before actually boarding the ship.
A recent study found that cruise lines had a “significant opportunity” to save 13 to 14 % by cutting cruise commissions, which Mr Frenaye thinks will happen in the future, though not immediately.
He thinks cruise lines are “testing the waters” to figure out future marketing. Carnival might be the first to move more seriously into bookings.
“It’s a great product for first-time cruisers, and they do a great job of marketing on their own. They’re just a marketing machine,” he said.
Mr Frenaye burned out in the construction business and bought a Maryland-based agency six years ago. Today, his company does $15 million in business and employs about a dozen people. His agents are about evenly divided between corporate and business travel.
He thinks in the future those two markets will remain the best for agents, though he thinks the trend is for only top echelon corporate managers to have some leeway in travel choices.
He thinks luxury travel offers a better market. “If a retail agency is not making a concentrated effort to get into the upscale leisure market, I think they’re making a mistake,” he said.
Report by David Wilkening
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