THEmanaging director of the UK’s largest flight-only firm has issued a New Year call to agents to back his business in the fight against direct-sell airlines.
Avro’s Roy Woodward is concerned agents are not promoting flight-only sales and are losing out on the chance to earn commission payments of 10%.
Woodward said: “Only around a tenth of agents really understand flight-only. They are specialist independents and not the multiples.”
He predicts agents will be increasingly hit by airlines like of EasyJet, but they can fight back by using the flexible services of the likes of Avro to meet customers’ demands.
Woodward said Avro can match EasyJet and Ryanair by offering anything from a day return flight to a return in a year.
“Agents do not seem to grasp this, and unless they do their, customers will go to the low-cost carriers direct,” he said. “We will continue to give agents the commission they want.”
To try to rectify the imbalance, Avro is to attack the direct-sell airlines on two fronts. Firstly it is launching a widespread education programme for multiples through its new dedicated sales and marketing team (Travel Weekly October 28). It will follow this with a huge shake-up in the way it promotes its prices.
Avro’s Wimbledon-based sales and marketing team, under the leadership of sales and marketing director Roger Kingshott, is to approach the multiples.
Woodward said: “We want to instill in them a different philosophy for selling flight-only. Too often customers just walk out the door.”
He added Avro’s enhanced reservation system ORBIT will also enable agencies to make quicker bookings with more information. Currently, 27 agencies use ORBITbut Avro expects this to grow rapidly.
Avro’s new pricing policy is expected to mirror the aggressive selling tactics used by EasyJet.
Woodward said Avro was looking at sector pricing by advertising one-way tickets to make it look more competitive against the direct-sell airlines.
“We will have to match EasyJet if we want to stay in the game,” said Woodward.