NEW ON-line shopping company Ybag has signed up 280 travel agents to supply holidays to its customers and it is still seeking more.
The company is offering agents with e-mail facilities the chance to sell holidays via its Internet site, which was launched on March 1.
Consumers can submit requests for products such as package holidays and flights and the messages are passed on to retailers, who can then respond via e-mail if they believe they can make a sale (Travel Weekly January 24).
Chief executive Dylan Schlosberg claimed that 32% of the 1,000 people who registered with the site in its first week were looking to buy travel products.
“The travel section is by far our most popular,” he said. “Instead of going to a travel site and trawling through page after page of offers, our customers are able to tell us what they want.
“We then send on their messages to agencies and they send personal replies.”
Ybag is aiming to sign up a total of 250,000 users by October and to achieve a sales conversion rate of one in every three requests.
One agency, Africa Travel Centre in Bloomsbury, London, received around half a dozen requests for information from Ybag during the site’s first week of operation.
Only two were relevant to its specialism, which is travel to Africa and the Indian Ocean. The agency experienced technical difficulties when responding to one of these e-mails, and is currently waiting for a reply to the other.
Travel consultant Simon Waller said: “I understand Ybag is trying to make its categories more specific. Once it has done that the service will be more relevant to us. I think it will be good.”
Ybag’s service will be free to travel agents for the first three months but from June a sliding scale of charges will be introduced.
n Ybag’s address is www.ybag.co.uk. The company can be contacted on 0800 731 8971.