Travel agents need to re-think how they are doing business, so they can survive in the new digital world where apps like Airbnb are making it easier for travellers to make their own bookings, says travel technology provider Travelport.
This was one of the topics discussed at the recent bi-annual Travelport Live Africa event in Cape Town.
Mike Croucher, Travelport GVP head of technical strategy and chief architect, says Travelport wants to position itself as a technology company that is not only a provider of a global distribution system (GDS), but also offers agents 'systems of intelligence' in line with where the world is moving in the fourth industrial revolution.
A GDS is a network system owned by (in this case) Travelport that enables transactions between travel industry service providers (mainly airlines, hotels and car rental companies) and travel agencies. These systems have been around since the early nineties.
Croucher says the power of the past was in 'systems of record', in which the GDS let travel agents make bookings in real-time. "We then put incredible processes over the top of it which made life difficult for the customer, but great for travel agents who translated between the human and these systems of record.
"What is changing is the winners are becoming systems of intelligence, which are connecting supply and demand in very different ways."
He gave the example of Uber and Airbnb, the biggest taxi and hotel businesses in the world that don't own a taxi or a hotel.
"Actually, what they are, are systems of intelligence, connecting supplier and demand, and personalising to the customer.
"These systems of intelligence are starting to understand data and people; that is where the new world is."
Croucher says Travelport will invest heavily in technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence, and place them on top of the systems it already has in place.
"This is the reason we believe that if we can give you [travel agents] that intelligence layer above the classic booking engines we have, to make your jobs easier, to make you able to sell more, and we provide that technology, that is where we are going."
While consumers now find it easier to book their own holiday arrangements through services like Airbnb and bookings.com, companies still have huge and growing budgets for business travel.
"Travelport now does over 10 billion searches on its platform a month. The volume is just going through the roof, yet we are doing it cheaper and faster than we have ever done it before," notes Croucher.
"Travel has expanded more than ever; demand is high and the airlines for the first time in a very long time are making very good profits. Airlines are not retiring older planes, they are keeping them in the air because the oil price is low and they have lots of customers out there and they can fill these planes.
"So it is a great time to be selling and buying and being in travel, if we exploit it."
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