Six months into his new role as vice president Asia and regional managing director Asia Pacific for Travelport, and Patrick Andres is digging into what he learnt on his first job to grow the travel distribution company’s business in the region.
“As a young boy working at the Westin Toronto, I recall the general manager saying, ‘My job is very easy. All you have to do to run a business is take care of your customers and employees and if you get that right, everything takes care of itself.’
“That voice has stayed with me throughout my career.”
And so one of the first things he’s doing at Travelport is to build a team that “shares similar values, that’s committed, engaged and aligned, and that works for the customer.”
Customers typically come to you for two reasons – problems and opportunities – and travel agents’ concerns are pretty similar to hotels in those two areas, said Andres who was running Asia for Sabre Hospitality Solutions for the last seven years.
“Travel agents like hoteliers need to deliver value to their customers – and their problems are around content and competition. The opportunities include how to grow their business, get higher margins, go into different segments and for traditional brick and mortar agents – how to go online, they are a bit lost there on how to grow the business through that channel.”
Under Andres’ leadership, Travelport is placing focus on two areas – online and hospitality – and building core expertise around them. “We have the seeds to do well in these two areas,” said Andres, referring to Travelport e-Pricing and Universal API as two solutions that support the OTA segment.
Its recent signing with Webjet to become Zuji’s global distribution partner is a positive move in the OTA area, he said. Webjet, which has a long term partnership with Travelport, has already begun the migration of Zuji onto its GDS platform.
While the jury is still out on whether Zuji will be able to have a renaissance under Webjet’s custodial care, John Guscic, managing director, Webjet, said that “Zuji’s leadership in Asia, where it is the number one OTA for air ticket sales in both Singapore and Hong Kong, makes it a critical component of our geographic growth strategy”.
Given Andres’ background, it is not surprising that Travelport will also make a bigger push into hospitality – with Travelport’s Rooms and More product.
“We are putting the different pieces together to go after, and serve customers better, to increase the sale of hotel products,” said Andres.
He is undaunted by talk that Travelport is “lost” or “confused” or “has lost its way”.
Contrary to these perceptions, he said Travelport is on the way up. “A lot of pieces are coming together, we’ve spent a lot of money developing new products and we are reinventing the space – for example, our merchandising platform, bringing content from low cost carriers through open APIs.
“There’s lots of excitement in the company and as a challenger, you’re more able to try new things and push the envelope.
“I’ve always liked the position of the challenger.”
He said that travel agents were interested in Travelport’s merchandise platform which “widens the spectrum of what they can sell, including ancillaries and other value adds” and they were curious about Travelport’s second generation desktop and its mobile app.
And he is positive about the market outlook. “Every travel transaction involves distribution, even if it’s direct. Last year, air travel grew 9% and I don’t see it plateauing. There’s a massive increase in young people who can spend on travel.
“Indirect distribution continues to grow, including through the GDS. I forsee a tipping point sometime in the future. As we become richer, we become time poor. Travel agents aggregate and give people choice – is a person better off doing point to point search to put together the perfect package or go to an intermediary?
“The travel agent is still around, still relevant, whether in corporate or online. What I do see is consolidation at all levels and if you look at other retailers – Amazon sells more things now than books – a travel agency could sell more things than travel.
“Every retailer is asking, what else can I sell?”
And even though in his previous role at Sabre, part of his mission was to help hotels increase direct website business, while at Travelport, his role is to champion the intermediary, Andres does not see any conflict in his new job.
He explained, “At SHS we worked with hotels to grow their business overall, focusing on revenue management (demand management) and both direct- and indirect-distribution. We powered and developed websites for hotels and hotel chains but we also provided connectivity to the GDS, IDS and major OTA (all indirect channels).
“I believed then, and still believe now, that seller of travel products need to distribute products in the way – and where – their consumers want to buy them. So if a client of an airline, hotel, or any other travel service wants to buy via a travel agent (on-line or off-line) they should be able to.
“Moreover, for sellers of travel products the wider distribution they get the more demand they generate, which ultimately provides them with the opportunity to manage that demand better – ideally increasing their pricing power (and growing their business).”
