Traditional agents can’t compete online, says e-travel boss

Amadeus’ travel solutions arm, e-travel, claims to have seen bookings go up by 90% in the past year. Most of the growth came from larger online agents, who are overtaking traditional agents hands down according to its e-travel md.

E-travel managing director, Ian Wheeler told TravelMole that growth rates of customer bookings within different sectors of the industry have varied. E-travel has seen most growth in customer bookings through online agents, which was up 280% for the first half of this year. By contrast, bookings through traditional agents’ websites have gone down.

Commenting on these trends Mr Wheeler told TravelMole: “For a smaller agent or highstreet brand it is harder to get across the brand online because they face big competitors, who can fork out for billboard and television advertising.

“People’s trust level is high for certain brands when they are shopping on the highstreet, but this changes online. The larger online agents like lastminute and expedia have this permanent and blunt advertising campaign that is targeted straight at getting bookings online. Many of them don’t even cite a phone number on their ads any more.”

Mr Wheeler told TravelMole that the total number of tickets booked – which counts return tickets or multiples as one booking – was 90% higher in June 2003 than the same month last year.

Although most of this growth came from increased bookings with online agents, Mr Wheeler says the use by corporations of e-commerce to book travel online is still maturing. The US coporate bookings went up 41% year-on-year in the first six months of 2003, and European bookings went up 169%, although Mr Wheeler says this was skewed by a single large new customer.

E-travel offers three solutions: Planitgo is aimed at high-volume consumer websites and has up to 1,000 customisable parametres, but is hosted centrally so as to maintain economies of scale. The second is the corporate booking engine, Aergo, and the last is checkmytrip.com.

The latter is designed as an in-between solution for customers that book in shops or over the phone, but want to check their booking online. It was launched two years ago, but has recently been upgraded to offer content like the weather and events alongside flight information. “It is the first step for consumers who aren’t sure about booking online” added Mr Wheeler, “it has really taken off, and has around around 900,000 PNR viewed each month.”