Theme parks and tickets specialist Attraction World has warned it could reduce support for independent consortia if members do not increase sales of its products.
Speaking exclusively to Travel Weekly after successfully engineering a management buyout last week, Tony Seaman, sales and marketing director, said agents were missing out on millions of pounds of commission.
He estimated the multiples and The Co-operative Travel outsell independent agents by 10 to one and accused consortia of being more interested in driving better commercial terms than getting members to sell ancillaries.
“Independents are so far behind the multiples,” he said. “If they could match them in selling ancillaries there’s £3 million to £4 million of commission there for them just from us.
“All the consortia do not seem to worry about this lost revenue. They want the best commercial deals. We aren’t able to have a really serious conversation about driving business on ancillaries.
“We cannot cost-effectively support the hundreds of agents in consortia when only 30 or so are booking us. We need to have a serious conversation about how we work with these guys.”
The £6.9 million management buyout, funded by Midlands-based venture capital firm Maven Capital Partners, will enable Attraction World to invest in overseas expansion and technology.
A new website went live last week that the supplier hopes will encourage agents to look beyond Florida when booking attractions. The site includes lists of must-do activities for resorts in the 48 countries featured by Attraction World.
Seaman said: “While we have 48 countries, the reality is 90% of their business is focused in 20 resorts. We hope this will help agents sell more product outside of Florida.”
Attraction World claimed to have grown its market share of trade bookings to 93% over the last four years.