Advantage Travel Partnership CEO Julia Lo Bue-Said reflected on the lasting impact of the pandemic and the evolving challenges faced by agencies at the organisation’s annual conference this week – whilst also setting out plans to stymie the impact of future crises.
“Three years on and while trading has been exceptionally positive, business owners and their people bear the scars with many challenges to navigate,” said Lo Bue-Said. “A high inflationary economy, cost of living impacts, wages and servicing Covid debts are all challenges business owners continue to grapple with all whilst keeping that fire in the belly.”
While nearly half of Advantage’s leisure agency members said staffing was their biggest concern in a recent survey, the partnership's global business travel director Guy Snelgar believes the “worst of that has passed” for its business travel agency members. “Generally TMCs are in a much better position than this time last year,” he told BTN Europe.
Instead, content fragmentation continues to play on the minds of many TMCs with recent NDC developments in particular leading to “increased engagement” with customers.
“There’s probably less awareness of this among small and medium-sized companies so the conversation is more being led by TMCs who are asking clients what content they want and explaining their strategies,” said Snelgar.
“There’s really varying degrees of knowledge among customers and if you’re less price sensitive maybe it’s not such a problem.” On the other hand, limited access to some airlines’ lowest-priced inventory via traditional GDS EDIFACT channels means that for some companies “there is a danger of increased leakage if they don’t have that NDC content”.
However, Snelgar believes 2023 will be a “sea change for NDC” as the GDSs begin to deliver and standardise such content.
Meanwhile, TMCs almost unanimously report rising airfares and hotel rates over the past year. In an April survey of Advantage members, 97 per cent reported an increase in the cost of airfares – with 15 per cent reporting increases of 50 per cent – and 94 per cent have seen an increase in hotel rates. The upshot is that while 61 per cent of Advantage TMCs are enjoying higher transaction levels than in 2019, 68 per cent are reporting higher turnover.
“Despite the enthusiasm for travel, I know from speaking to a lot of business owners that the journey of rebuilding a travel business is also a tough one,” said Lo Bue-Said in a plenary session, pointing to challenges such as ongoing industrial action, recruitment and debt repayments. “Maintaining an agile approach remains key and continuing to implement short-term strategic priorities will inevitably be required.”
She continued: “There is also a risk that with the euphoria around a positive trading environment, that we create a view that the travel industry’s resilience is also its weakness when it comes to government recognition and support. Not only that but with a general election looming [in the UK], we also run the risk of a government now making decisions based on the electorate going to the polls and not on the needs of businesses, and this is exactly why we have not abated with our ambition to champion the industry with politicians and policy makers.”
In the last year Advantage has partnered with UK-based tour operator association AITO to form a lobbying arm to raise the profile of the industry, enlisted a Westminster-based public affairs consultancy and created a member-led policy advisory group.
“Our ambition to ensure the sector is recognised as a key economic driver hasn’t wavered. Our industry was not looked after during Covid so, quite simply, I believe more needs to happen and change if we are to be looked after when we hit our next crises,” she said.
“It’s a long road but our increased political engagement is enabling us to collectively work at influencing, making strong representations, building engagement, as well as being in a position that when we hit the next crisis – and we will – we will have built strong foundations for the UK outbound travel sector through increased collaboration and recognition.”