I always fancied running my very own bamboo beach bar on some idyllic Caribbean island.
Well, if I believe everything I read in the press, now is the time to do it. British Airways commission cuts and the Internet are going to put me out of business.
BA is changing the way it rewards agents for selling its flights because its circumstances have changed with more competition, general overcapacity in the skies and downgrading of passengers from Club into economy.
This could obviously be bad news. However, I don’t like to hear arguments, one way or the other, that are simply not true. If BA were only paying me £5 for an hour’s work, I’d be the first to complain but they are not. We rarely do a shuttle for one person one way and that’s the only scenario when I’d only earn a fiver.
An average shuttle booking of two return tickets will earn me £20 plus a handling fee, about 25% more than I currently earn and it takes about 10mins. We don’t book many first class and Concorde bookings and those agents that do will be the worst affected.
People say I’m on the side of BA – wrong. I’m keeping my head down waiting to see the results of meetings between BA and GBTA, ABTA and ARTAC. All have been successful in the past in securing better deals than ever looked possible.
These are delicate negotiations to say the least and cannot be helped by one side being slagged off before the deal has been done.
As for the Internet problem, it is not just one thing it’s three – e-mail, Web sites and Internet information and booking. I don’t deny all are important to the future of any travel agent and we currently use all three to a certain degree.
However, like Teletext, call centres and direct sell before it, it’s not necessarily true that all clients will start to miss out the agent and book on the Net. It could cost them dearly on both price and service and that’s the message we have to get across.
In the US, seven out of 10 air fares quoted on the Net were more expensive than the same flight booked with a good travel agent. I’ve just been skiing in France and met people who flew EasyJet to Geneva and paid £240 each.
They were shocked to learn that I’d saved £100 per head by booking a KLM fare available to anyone. The Net isn’t always cheaper but the public perceive it to be. Flights, cruises and holidays can all be better priced through an agent (assuming our tour operator ‘friends’ operate a level playing field).
As always, we must add value to the booking process by providing excellent service and giving customers more than they anticipated or expected.
Anyone care for a pina colada?