Robert Bailey

Former CEO and chairman of travel search site Wego Martin Symes started last week as head of marketing and former ZUJI and Ensogo executive, Tai Parata, will head up online sales. Brett Henry, who was wearing the dual hats of marketing and commercial, will now focus on the latter.

Having absorbed Sabre Pacific into the Abacus fold after a shareholding alignment with Sabre last year, the company has also built out a global accounts team based in Singapore, led by Rebecca Daniels.

“We are all geared up for the year,” said president and CEO Robert Bailey, a day after he had led the company’s internal meeting, the Abacus Kick-Off, held in Singapore. “All the building blocks are in place.”

Last year had its ups and downs. While it over-performed in North-east Asia and South-east Asia, India stumbled and there was the looming fiscal cliff in the US and dark clouds over Europe.

“But fundamentals are adjusting this year. China is back into growth mode, India has foreign investment initiatives in place and coming into January, things are looking good.”

Bailey is forecasting a 5-10% growth this year for Abacus.

He also believes we are in one of those cycles which will see a pick-up in innovation. “Recession drives innovation and when you come out of a prolonged recessionary period, there’s an uptake in optimism and higher tolerance to risk.

“Good ideas done through adversity will start to take off. I think we’re entering this exciting phase.”

As such, Abacus will focus on driving innovation. “We’re out there, looking at what’s coming down the chute and putting it into the channels as quickly as possible.”

While the travel agency space is still quite conservative – needing “coaching, cajoling and sometimes forcing” – it is imperative agents experiment because the biggest change is consumer behaviour and how they use technology, said Bailey.

“Google is experimenting and consumers are open to experimentation, enabled by devices.”

In this light, Abacus has set up Abacus Ventures to look at innovation and business opportunities. “We want to look at what’s new and see if can invest in it, and build know-how and form joint ventures. “We want to accelerate participation in emerging business models – search, online tools, solutions attached to payment, content aggregation in non-air.

“The fragmentation in the travel supply is immense in Asia – there are opportunities to find and add value.”

He sees Asia leapfrogging in terms of technology adoption and predicts that online travel will accelerate and possibly reach 50% of the market within the next five years.

“Look at the iPad and tablets and how they’ve changed customer behaviour – there was nothing five years ago.”

He added, “While some think that penetration of online travel is still low – on average across Asia – relative to customer adoption of technology, remember it’s from a low base and it’s also in pockets. Part of why traditional channels are still favoured in Asia is cultural and part of it is infrastructure.

“A generational change and leapfrogging will change that but while online will be a significant channel, it won’t be the only channel.

“The indirect channel will still exist because travel is fragmented and complex and you are always going to need intermediaries – where you sit in the value chain may change.”

Asked if he saw any alternatives to the GDS model coming up, Bailey said the airline-GDS debate has moved from one of value proposition to “about getting control of retail and selling of products and services”.

“Can the GDS fulfill the needs I see as an airline – that’s the question being asked today. The truth is, cost of setting up aggregation and channel partners is high and complex. That’s why the GDS is there.

“The question to ask is, with new technology, how do you leverage that and build in flexibility and adaptability?

“The paradox is you need intra-operability between airlines across different markets and you need standardization to operate as a network, but you can’t just sweep GDSs away – they are so fundamental to the system.”