Travel Agent Musings

For today’s consumer, loyalty programs are a given. When we use our credit cards, when we fly, when we frequent a particular chain of hotels, we expect to collect points toward a reward some time in the future.

 This May will mark the 30^th anniversary of the first loyalty program in the travel industry: American Airlines AAdvantage, the original frequent flyer program. This gives us an opportunity to think about loyalty initiatives and how they can help us build relationships with our clients. (Hint: there’s more to it than simply rewarding repeat customers.)

 Many travel agencies are part of one loyalty program or another that encourages customer point accumulation and redemption. These programs have two major benefits:

1. Customer retention: This sort of goes without saying. Rewarding your customers for coming back is an effective way of keeping them around.

2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Loyalty programs allow you to implement broad strategies that can integrate large amounts of information and help you know your clients more intelligently.

 Most agencies do well with the former, but how are you doing with the latter?

 If you don’t have an effective CRM strategy, it’s worth taking the time to improve. Efficient use of CRM data gives your business two huge advantages in the long run.

 Firstly, it helps you to quantify your clients. For instance, how quickly and easily can your agents quantify past information about customers, such as the history of past sales? A good CRM strategy puts this information at an agent’s fingertips.

 Secondly, and most importantly, successful CRMs help businesses market themselves more intelligently. For example, let’s say one of your clients is a family of 4. The parents are in their 30s, and the kids are 5 and 7. You have stored in your CRM that they recently purchased a Walt Disney (don’t sue us!) vacation package. Well and good. But ten years from now, based on the change in their ages, will your CRM be able to market more appropriate vacation options to them?

 If the answer is “yes”, it will foster greater and longer-lasting customer relationships than any reward program can on its own.

  Sadly, superefficient CRMs don’t grow on trees, but this is a case where the old adage proves true: the cost of keeping a client is less than the cost of attracting a new one.

Gord

Despite impressive technological advances in the industry, the “good old-fashioned” green screen remains the weapon of choice for many travel agents. But has this weapon lost its edge? Is the green screen really dead?

If it is, the culprit will be more user-friendly GUI applications.

Travel booking applications like Sabre Red, which will continue to roll out in 2011; or Travelport’s new and improved Agencia are the wave of the future. They present a whole host of benefits that our tried-and-true green screens just can’t compete with.

The most apparent advantage of GUIs is ease of use. Why should agents rely on the use of long, cryptic commands to perform a task that can be done with a few simple clicks?

Case-in-point: seat selection for a flight. A GUI gives the agent a clear and specific graphic representation of available seats, and allows them to pick one with a click of their mouse.

New programming will not only make the job easier, but will actually help agents to do their jobs more thoroughly. For example, the upcoming version of Agencia will allow agents to purchase items such as an Air Canada lounge pass with just a couple of mouse clicks at the time they are booking the flight.

Can your green screen do that? (If it can, I’m afraid you may be hallucinating!)

I’m all for nostalgia. Like many of you, I can type out green screen commands in my sleep. But that’s only because I’ve been doing it for years.

What about those who are new to the industry? Travel agents coming out of school have only ever been exposed to GUI applications. Green screens are completely foreign to them, and that means a training nightmare. It could take months to become acquainted with all those cumbersome commands.

In contrast, the user-friendly nature of GUIs makes them very learnable. In a day or two, anyone can become reasonably proficient.

Let’s recap. GUIs:

1. make the job easier;
2. do the job better;
3. are much easier to learn.

So are you ready to bury your green screen yet?

Maybe not. But you should think about it. While it may be premature to call the undertaker, this type of application is definitely coming to the end of its life cycle.

In all likelihood, the next generation of faster, smarter travel software will finally send the green screen riding off into the sunset.

Gord