Back in the offline world, part 2: Travel agency technology

Like any industry, travel has been profoundly changed by advancements in technology. How people research, book and experience a trip is completely different than it was just 20 years ago.

Yet moving the travel industry from the offline world to online hasn’t been without its challenges - not least because travel is inherently about a physical experience.

Travel is about seeing, doing, tasting, touching, meeting.

It’s about human interaction.

And while the foundation of our coverage at PhocusWire is focused on how online systems have transformed the travel process, the offline component - the agencies, the technologies, the suppliers that have a person-to-person element to their services - remains very much at play.

For part two in this month’s series on the offline travel market, we look at the technology that is supporting the work of traditional agents and how it has evolved over the years.

Agent perspective

Korrine Johnson has been a travel agent for more than 10 years and in that time has seen a dramatic change in the amount of time and effort it takes her to serve her clients, which now number around 3,000 at her Journeys Travel Company.

“When I first started I had to make a call for every single thing,” Johnson says. “It took me forever to do anything. Now I can book a cruise start to finish online, completely confirmed, in five minutes.”

Across all types of travel that she books, from cruises and flights to accommodations and packages, Johnson, who is affiliated with Travel Planners International, says she relies on wholesalers that provide search and booking tools exclusively for agents - tools that didn’t exist when she began 10 years ago and that are continually being improved.

“These travel suppliers are creating software and technology that helps us quickly sort through the options and narrow things down based on any number of factors,” she says.

“And, of course, their prices are better than what a consumer can find.”

Social media, which was still in its infancy when Johnson began her career, is now a valuable resource in her research on behalf of clients.

“There are a million Facebook groups out there based on any specialty or generality you can think of,” she says.

“As agents, we can’t possibly have been everywhere, but when you put us together, we can say, ‘Who’s been to this resort?’ and get real feedback from a travel agent point of view.”

Johnson has also seen an increase in the tools she can provide to her clients to digitize their experience.

“My clients rarely want to speak to me. They want to do things electronically too,” she says.

“For example, I’m booking a group of families for spring break next year, and I’m using Funjet Vacations. They will build me a website for the clients so … they can book it themselves. It immediately links them with the group they are going with, and I have access to the information so if they need the personal touch, I’m there. It makes this nice hybrid experience.”

Johnson says she does also work with the online travel agencies’ affiliate programs, but she prefers not to book clients through those sites.

“When you go to a hotel and you book through a site like that, they know your loyalty is only to price, so they may give you the room by the laundry room. If they need to walk someone, they will walk you. They know you will only ever be looking for price, so they’re not concerned about keeping your loyalty,” she says.

But in cases where one of these sites offers the best deal, Johnson says she encourages clients to let her handle the booking since there is no additional cost to them and it comes with something that is priceless – peace of mind from knowing Johnson has sales representatives at the OTAs that can assist her if something goes wrong for one of her clients.

“I always say a cheap vacation can still be a very expensive mistake.” 

Behind-the-scenes

Powering the search and booking engines of the dozens of suppliers that Johnson and other agents use are the global distribution systems.

These systems, which once were built with green screens and rate codes, are now point-and-click graphical interfaces with rich content, helping agents work smarter and faster.

And as consumer-facing sites have matured to provide deep access to travel products and prices, agents rely on these agent-exclusive products combined with their industry expertise to help them differentiate their services.

“We are highly acclaimed for having over 260 airlines that have branded fares and ancillaries in our Travelport Smartpoint, where this content can be consumed through our APIs,” says Erika Moore, vice president and general manager of U.S. sales for Travelport.

“For tour operators, loyalty operators, leisure agencies in general, this is music to their ears because in a single point of consumption to their own point-of-sale platform, they are able to provide what is needed to upsell their products: an upgraded seat or Wi-Fi or extra baggage. This is a dramatic change. Just a couple of years back, if you wanted to sell these things you had to go into the airline’s website, and that would be an interruption in the workflow of the travel agent.”

Sabre Travel Network’s leisure segment marketing manager, Sjoefn Arnbjoernsdottir, says it has three areas of focus for its agent-facing technology: automation of repetitive and tedious tasks, integration of IATA’s New Distribution Capability content standards and facilitation of business intelligence and data analytics.

All of these capabilities are available to agents through the new Sabre Red Workspace, the company's point-of-sale tool for travel agencies that has been rolling out since April.

“Consumer behavior is changing, and that is of course driven by some of the ways that non-travel brands innovate. I’m referring to Amazon and Netflix and others,” Arnbjoernsdottir says.

“Travelers have started to expect similar service. They want people and tools to recognize them, and they want to be presented with relevant offerings. We have continued to differentiate in the areas of customer profiles, air shopping and merchandising capability. So when you have access at your fingertips to good customer data, and you have all these offerings available at your fingertips, it can be very powerful for the traditional travel agent. In earlier days, they were a little more transactional, and they have now the tools in place that enables them to be a much better consultant.”

Sabre Red Workspace also has a marketplace with more than 100 apps that agents can select to customize their capabilities. Arnbjoernsdottir says it's also investing in revenue optimization tools for agents, such as advanced filtering that allows them to maximize what they earn from each booking.

Through its Search Control Console, Moore says Travelport is providing an intelligent, easy-to-use interface for agents to optimize search results for clients.

“In the past, in order to drive changes around the way that tools search for options, it would be an entire project around coding and development,” she says.

“Through tools like search control console, it is literally an ‘if and when’ solution-type matrix that allow you to define business rules and it does it automatically for you without the need to touch code."

• Back in the offline world, part 1: Travel agency endurance