Brett Henry, Abacus’ vice president of marketing, cited the first two qualities at the underground event in Bangkok yesterday. Focusing on productivity, he said he was surprised that most agencies still operated without benchmarks. “In a single digit margin business, you’ve got to focus on productivity.”

He said the productivity benchmarks should “look at where you are today and your goal and then what tasks do you need to eliminate and automate”.

He said travel agencies also needed to focus on the end traveler experience – and that it was no longer just about booking a flight or hotel but also looking after the traveler from end-to-end.

He cited a simple example of travellers who still printed their e-tickets and most printouts didn’t even carry the travel agency branding on the tickets.

Mostly, he said winning was about leadership which included having vision, the ability to operationalize, understanding of the details and change management. “There are lots of opportunities out there – but you need to have leadership and courage to make the changes and do your thing.”

Henry said that even though relationships were still important in the business, barriers to complications are coming down, lowering barriers of entry to tech-savvy entrepreneurs looking for opportunities to disrupt the game.

Listening to Henry speak, I am reminded anew by what’s happening in the travel business today. And it’s this – as the business evolves and technology plays a bigger part, a divide has developed – and continues to widen – between new entrants who don’t know travel and the traditional travel agents who have expertise and relationships but don’t know technology.

I know. This is not an AHA moment but stay with me …

Just as Expedia changed the industry more than a decade ago in the US, companies such as Agoda, Ctrip, Qunar and MakeMyTrip are changing the game in Asia.

Most of these new companies were started by entrepreneurs who don’t know travel but were able to use technology to solve problems and, when they needed to, brought in advisors with travel expertise.

Speaking to a few traditional travel agency bosses at the event, I can tell that they continue to struggle with technology and all the changes that are happening in their business.

One told me, “There are times when I feel so overwhelmed and I look at all these young guys talking about things I don’t understand and I wonder, should I sell or close shop and just retire and play golf?

“Yet there’s a side of me that knows that my knowledge and networks are valuable and that these young guys may have cool technology but they don’t understand how complex the industry is.”

He is right. I have seen many start-ups begin with euphoria and energy, believing they have the right tool, solution and user interface to solve everything and then they come up against the complexities of travel distribution – opaqueness of air fares, multi-layers of issues, fragmentation of hotels, product and pricing, relationships …

And they realise that often to get the best air fares, they can’t just screen scrape or connect via an API, they need to know the individual country manager of the station and maybe take him out to lunch or play a round of golf or two.
And suddenly they find themselves caught up in the intricate web of travel.

At this time, most of them look around for advisors who have travel expertise and some are lucky to get the right experts and mentors onboard.

One corporate travel agency told me it’s trying to bridge the two worlds – it’s set aside a fund to incubate start-ups.
“We ask young kids to come to us with ideas and we give them the funds to develop,” he said. “It’s hard to innovate when you’re busy running the day-to-day business – you need someone with fresh thinking.”

It is good to know the newer generation of traditional travel agents are trying to think outside the box.

As Henry said, with the ground shifting constantly, there are lots of opportunities for everyone to make a go for it. For instance, citing the example of Jetsetter which launched as a pure-iPad play, he said there was an opportunity for a travel agency to start a pure mobile play from the ground up. “Focusing on one device could be one way to go.”

And it seems to me that while technology is easy to build and buy, knowledge, expertise and relationships are harder to access.

So who will have the advantage in the next chapter of travel – I reckon it will be the ones who manage to bridge both worlds creatively.