Villaclick.com to offer 12.5% commission to UK agents

Online villa search, selection and booking service Villaclick.com is launching a service in the UK to enable travel agents to dynamically package holidays.

The company, launched to the Irish trade in 2004, claims to offers travel agents a high commission alternative to tour operator cuts.

It will provide selected travel agents access to 1,600 villas and apartments in southern Europe and the US via a highly functional, branded white label website which can be easily integrated into an agent’s site.

Commission starts at 12.5%, rising to 15% and 17.5% depending on sales volumes.

Villaclick has been working with Travel Savers and Travel Centres in Ireland with 50 shops using the service to search, select and book online.

Managing director Matthew Hind said: “Selling package holidays is not easy at present.

“Tour operators such as First Choice and Thomson are squeezing margins down to 7% – a level at which the cost of sale starts to outweigh the profits made.

“The tour operators are doing this because their market is shrinking as more and more customers seek to upgrade to a more personal holiday experience. As they fight for their share of a reducing market, they resort to cutting costs and offering deals. To fund this they reduce their own costs, and the softest target is to cut agents’ commissions.”

Hind added: “We launched in Ireland at the time the largest of the low cost tour operators, Budget Travel, announced it was reducing commissions to agents from 10% to 5%. Falcon Travel recently followed suit by reducing its commissions to 5%. Budget has now gone further and reduced commissions to 0%. The UK market is just following suit.”

Hind said this was an opportunity for agents to start dynamically packaging product for their clients.

Unlike just offering another company’s product, with Villaclick this can be presented as the agent’s product. This helps to develop client loyalty with the Travel Agent who does the selling, he added. 

Cork-based agency Lee Travel has been using the site for the last year. Managing director Declan O’Connell said: “We are seeing a notable change in the way that clients organise holidays. They are booking later and are more demanding but still want the personal experience that buying through us can offer.

“The villas and apartments are presented under the Lee Travel brand. We sell flights and car hire or transfers on top and can actually offer clients, in many cases, a better value deal than buying an equivalent package through a tour operator.

“Villaclick.com has integrated their facility into our website and this allows my staff to search, select and book a property as part of a tailor-made holiday whilst the client sits with them. The fact that our margins are higher at 12.5% as well makes this a win-win for everyone.”

Report by Phil Davies 

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