TMCs can beat online rivals at their own game, GBTA

Online travel giants are buying the expertise they need to break into the business travel market, but agents can compete by buying technology.

This is according to Philip Carlisle, chief executive of the Guild of Business Travel Agents.

Speaking to TravelMole at a GBTA press event on Tuesday, Mr Carlisle said: “Online companies can take us on, but to do it they need the right resources to be a Travel Management Company (TMC).”

During the GBTA Conference in Shanghai last month, it emerged that Expedia wanted to grab a slice of the business travel market. Hyatt senior vice-president marketing John Wallis told delegates that Expedia was planning an advertising spend of around $250 million in Europe to convince people to switch to the website.

“For shorthaul point to point bookings in a small company it can be cheaper to do it yourself online rather than involving someone else”, Mr Carlisle told TravelMole.

He said that many GBTA members had acquired the technology to go online and are encouraging customers to use it for simple bookings, and added that one of the Guild’s most recent members is Travelstore.com.

For complex bookings, the web is not always the best option, said Mr Carlisle. “There becomes more choice, with more research and you need someone to make a judgement on the result of a search. There had got to be human intervention.

“If online companies want to do that they will have to buy the expertise – which is what they are doing. But that is no different from TMCs buying technology.”

Speaking at the same event, GBTA chairman Richard Lovell said agents could benefit from the increased transparency brought by the web. He told TravelMole: “The more complex the pricing structure gets, the more we come into our own”.

Mr Lovell also outlined how the role of the business travel agent had changed under various forces including economic pressure, commission cutting, and advancements in technology.

He said it was important for agents to embrace technology and said that further consolidation between technology companies and TMCs was likely in the future.

He said: “We are now in a market where everybody is moving into everybody else’s space in an attempt to survive, grow and ensure long term profitability.

Mr Lovell also said that agents no longer simply issue tickets, but manage travel including tracking employees, analysing travel patterns and managing budgets. This changing role is being reflected by a change in name for the Guild, to the Guild of Travel Management Companies (GTMC), which will take effect by 2005.

Mr Carlisle said that online giants like Expedia had not yet approached the GBTA concerning membership, but that he would welcome them as long as they met the criteria.