Although traditional agents still control three quarters of the Asia Pacific total travel market of US$322.6 billion in 2013, it’s a share that will inevitably shrink as consumers in Asia Pacific jump channels.
Martin Symes: New product will make travel agents more efficient and competitive.
According to PhoCusWright’s Asia Pacific Online Travel Overview Seventh Edition, one quarter of the total APAC travel market was booked online in 2013, up from one fifth in 2012, and this growth rate is expected to continue through 2016, when nearly one third of APAC travel will be booked online.
The move towards new technology and mobile is accelerating that channel shift.
As such, Abacus at its conference in Abu Dhabi today rolled out what vice president marketing Martin Symes calls a “ground breaking” rollout of new products and tools that will make travel agents more efficient and competitive in the changing times ahead.
“Our role is helping Abacus agencies drive profitable growth in an increasingly challenging world – our success is the agents’ success,” he said.
The breakthrough product is Abacus Workspace, the agency point of sale desktop solution and built on the Sabre Red workspace product. It’s used by 370,000 agents around the world and the rollout in Asia Pacific is 46% complete with nine to 10 countries already at 100% rollout.
Abacus Wiz will be switched off once the migration is completed within the year.
But what’s an even bigger breakthrough, said Symes, is that the Workspace, which is integrated with the Sabre Red App Centre, will give agents to a new, rich and expanded content platform, Abacus ContentPlus.
Abacus ContentPlus is Abacus’ attempt to help agents drive non-air revenues and, in turn, diversify its own revenue streams beyond air – one of the biggest pain points for travel agents.
Abu Dhabi is the venue for Abacus International Conference 2014.
Content partnerships have been signed with UK-based Travelfusion, which will scale the company’s low cost carrier (LCC) options to 180 budget airlines. Destination products will be available with a partnership with City Discovery, car rental through Cartrawler and insurance with AIG Group. Rates will be nett and agents have the flexibility to mark up.
Planned future phases will see further additions including rail, cruise, ferry and coach products.
Think of it as travel vending machine that gives agents the access to diverse pieces of content and the flexibility to sell what they like at the rates they think they can fetch.
“Content fragmentation has been a major pain for agents. This brings the content that agents actually sell into a single place and allows them to sell it on the basis they want – nett – rather than waiting for commissions from suppliers – and interoperability with the Abacus PNR.
“It takes away the inefficiencies and we give them the tools that add value to the distribution side of their business.
“It is diversifying our revenues without adding a single new customer.”
President and CEO Robert Bailey said this product rollout was as much about Abacus defending its turf from other competitors in a very fragmented market as it is about arming its traditional travel agent customers with new tools to bring them into the online world.
“In a fragmented market, the market leader who innovates stays ahead. There’s been a dramatic change in the way people buy and sell – this helps us maintain relevance in a multi-channel world.”
It’s photo snapping time at AIC 2014.
In his opening speech, Bailey said the online and offline worlds are not mutually exclusive. “You’ve seen offline brands that are very strong using online to drive more business and you’ve seen online brands that are using offline means to make themselves more visible to customers,” he said.
“Our solutions allow the traditional travel agents to adopt technology and make them competitive – it gives them the flexibility to customize and improve their profit margins.”
Symes recognises the challenges of agency adoption. “We are very aware that agents have been operating in certain ways a long time and they are not going to change overnight. There will be an incremental approach – there will be some early adopters but we hope it will become mass market in a short period of time.”
In total, Abacus rolled out 10 products and solution, which include TripCase (which replaces Virtually There), Abacus Room Deal, Abacus Travel Plus aimed at wholesalers, Abacus Mobile Connect and Virtual Payment.
Coming from an online travel background – he was CEO of Wego before joining Abacus 18 months ago, Symes said there was one thing that traditional travel agents could learn from the online travel brands such as Booking.com and Expedia.
“They do well in merchandising – so it goes beyond just having content. ContentPlus gives agents the content, it is up to them to merchandise as well if not better than the online brands.”
• Featured image (work tools) credit: iStock
