Survey Finds Trend to Greater Reliance on Asia Pacific’s Agents

As a significant number of consumers move toward self-service mode, travel agencies in the Asia Pacific region are seeing a greater reliance on their services, according to a Sabre Corp. survey.

A survey of 100 agents in 15 key markets in the region, conducted in the spring for Sabre Corp., found that agency clients are becoming “more cost conscious and more demanding.”

Many agents anticipate that service expectations will only climb higher, necessitating a shift to a “concierge-style service model,” according to the survey.

TMCs will obtain content from a wide variety of sources and assemble it on a single platform “from which the customer can choose,” it said.

Corporate travelers are more comfortable when they can get all their required services – air ticket, hotel reservation, transfer, meals, conference, event enrollment, event management, visa assistance, tour packages, car rental, train, bus, ferry ticket or whatever else they might need – under one roof, respondents said.

The consolidation of multiple sources of content in one place will facilitate shopping, but it may also be linked to the perception that “suppliers tend to divide and conquer,” with different fares and rates set according to the commercial context.

Offsetting that effect will require deeper searches, which in turn will require access to a larger and more inclusive B2B2C marketplace.

More focus on comfort
In another finding of the survey, corporations’ mandates to “always book the lowest fare” have collided with the needs of travelers for some modicum of comfort.

The proliferation of low-cost carriers in the Asia Pacific region, coupled with the unbundling of fares, have led to a need to find a balance between controlling costs and treating travelers in less draconian fashion.

Fortunately, corporations have been reexamining their policies and looking at more realistic comparisons of full-service carriers and stripped-down-service carriers with lots of ancillary add-ons.

A related trend is the increasing number of travelers who try to stretch their companies’ travel policies by instructing their TMCs to book premium economy seats.

Nearly a quarter of agent respondents reported such requests.

In addition, 47% of agents have observed that when some travelers are told to “downgrade” from business class to cut costs, they only make it halfway down the cabin.

In other survey findings:

• Most of “rogue” transactions take place while travelers are in the midst of their trips and want or need to change their travel plans. More than a third (36%) of agents struggle to maintain control in these situations.

• There is considerable evidence that when itineraries closely match travelers’ personal preferences, they are more motivated to cooperate with policy. Agents should use profiling tools to select products their travelers want. The Sabre survey found that almost half of respondents had experienced off-policy bookings motivated by travelers loyalty programs. Again, better use of profiling tools can help.

• When travel plans are mirrored on the traveler’s mobile device, compliance rises and off-policy or “rogue” bookings decrease.

More than two-thirds of respondents have clients deploying apps that incorporate policy compliant content, with a further 18% confirming their intention to follow.

But many also see mobile tools as an area for further improvement, with 44% citing a need for better mobile apps to assist travelers, compared to just a third last year.