How can Travel Planet be summed up in a few figures?
Tristan Dessain-Gelinet - Travel Planet achieved a turnover of €70 million in 2016. On the basis of contracts already signed, we are counting on 120 to 130 million this year. The rate of online transactions, which is what sets us apart, has reached 83% for all customers and all services combined.
What's new at the agency?
T. D.-G. - We have launched and rolled out the Click & Control access portal for all services. It gives travel managers, travel agents and travellers access to the Self Booking Tool (SBT)It also provides access to business intelligence filtered by trips made or scheduled, and by level of access. The platform also incorporates a traveller tracking and live communication tool. We are launching online reservations for services that do not exist in SBT, such as VTC, and we are in the process of adding various services to our portal, via direct links with the supplier. The advantage is that we are no longer tied to the speed of development of SBT.
What booking tool do you use?
T. D.-G. – Mainly the Amadeus AETM tool, but we are currently looking at other systems. The SBT is now just one brick in our Click & Control portal. If we were to change the SBT, access to the portal, the mechanics, passwords and profiles would remain unchanged for the user. This guarantees us autonomy and flexibility, without having to impact the customer. We're not going to redo what works in the SBT - it would be foolish to try and reinvent the wheel. On the other hand, when it comes to so-called ancillary services, which will take a long time to integrate, we sign contracts that allow us to fetch and display relevant content directly. Everything is more transparent for the user.
Is content from a player like Airbnb one of the services you are targeting?
T. D.-G. - Absolutely, players like Airbnb or Sweet Inn, or booking tools for meeting rooms.
We are looking at external growth opportunities in Europe
What are your priorities for 2017?
T. D.-G. - We will continue to work on content, by increasing the ancillary services on offer. As far as the back office is concerned, the emphasis will be on the automated transmission of data from booking to invoicing. We issued over 300,000 invoices last year, so there is a major challenge in terms of processes. We are also looking at external growth opportunities in Europe, which will be announced later this year. It will be a medium-sized agency, like Travel Planet was around two years ago. We will bring to it all our know-how and content, and we will have access to their knowledge of the market concerned, and to the necessary contacts.
What is the profile of your customers?
T. D.-G. - We are targeting major accounts. The TMC market is no longer divided up as it was three or four years ago, when the big clients were reserved for international agencies. It's not the size of the company that's the issue, but rather its offering, its flexibility and its processing capacity. Today, we work on travel budgets ranging from €1 or €2 million, up to €35 or €40 million in annual business volumes. Below €150,000 in annual travel, a company doesn't need an agency. This is unjustifiable, contrary to what some agencies claim. Between €150,000 and €800,000, we're talking about large SMEs where there's still no structure in place. Individualities block a certain amount of automation in the processes. Beyond a million euros, there is a need for structuring, a volume that requires workflow management and the application of rules. In these cases, we are perfectly suited. And that's what we know how to do better than the others: take the company's rules and configure the tool exactly to suit, because we have the resources in-house in terms of development, configuration and customer support. At the same time, we try to differentiate ourselves by offering the widest possible range of content, whereas today's market tends to be limited to automated content.
However, the main TMCs have announced agreements with Airbnb in recent months...
T. D.-G. - I wouldn't call an agreement that consists of offering a TMC account to make a reservation on Airbnb an agreement. TMCs will have really reacted when they are able to aggregate content themselves, and offer it by applying the travel policy and profile management in the reservation system.
Will Travel Planet be able to do this?
T. D.-G. - Of course we do. We only sign agreements that provide for this type of operation.
Do you think the status of the business travel agency is under threat?
T. D.-G. - It all depends on what the customer, the company, is looking for. Is it satisfied with open booking that it cannot control, or a posteriori via expense report or business card systems? There is a real war going on between two approaches that are totally opposed to each other: expense reports or TMC. The company can choose to authorise its travellers to book as they wish, and then equip itself with an expense report tool that gathers the information and enables the data to be processed. This is a major trend today, and the acquisition of Cytric by Amadeus is part of this dynamic. This is because TMCs, which should be the right intermediary upstream, are not able to offer a convincing operational alternative for travellers, who are used to more choice in the private sphere. Agencies need to realise that they need to integrate non-ticketing staff into their teams. This poses a problem for the very existence of TMCs in the more or less long term. If the TMC is reduced to issuing tickets, especially single tickets, it will no longer be necessary in the long term. It is therefore the intermediary that will disappear if there is no real takeover.
Are other links in the business travel chain under threat?
T. D.-G. - There are a number of intermediaries we could do without, and they are very expensive. Top of the list are packaged cards. There are some real questions to be asked. The TMCs should take the problems of financing their working capital into their own hands. We are in the process of developing our own card with Société Générale, which costs us ten times less than what is offered by the leaders in the sector. This reduction is inevitably reflected in the chain. How can we justify charging between 1.85 and 1.95 % for a forty-day advance when interest rates are zero?
How do you strike a balance between technology and people?
T. D.-G. - In the same way as in the world of leisure travel: when the complexity means that the answers offered by automatic systems are no longer satisfactory, we call in an agency. Our dedicated teams are available 24/7 through our Melbourne subsidiary, which takes over when the French offices are closed. When only 15% of the volume remains to be processed offline, that frees up a lot of time to do it in a high-quality way.
How far will human expertise go beyond artificial intelligence?
T. D.-G. - The better artificial intelligence performs, the more we use it, and the more satisfied our teams will be. However powerful it may be, artificial intelligence will never replace the human interface. In 2134, perhaps, but we won't be around to witness it... There will always be complex cases to manage, and human analysis will always be needed. It's a major mistake to pit the two concepts against each other. Given our growth and the number of customers we are integrating, our offline teams are the first to be delighted with the rate of adoption of online services. For years, online was pitted against offline. This was because the TMCs didn't have the technological resources to integrate online. What's more, this has happened on a constant business volume basis. You only have to look at the recent consequences for employment in certain agencies... Travel Planet is continuing to recruit, but the offline teams represent 40% of our workforce, because this is no longer our only business. We don't need to reinvent our business - it's almost too late. The strategies and internal resources of TMCs are totally unsuited to customer demand.
Our industry is in danger if it is unable to offer a genuine alternative.
So how would you describe the role of a TMC today?
T. D.-G. - A travel IT services company, capable of managing flows, making them available to customers, searching for content and displaying it. From the traveller's point of view, we need to be as efficient and attractive as a BtoC tool. Ergonomics is a key point. Our travellers have to want to come to Travel Planet for information, not be forced to do so. It's also a question of negotiating with the airlines, challenging them on different routes and highlighting certain offers. It's also about data management: every day, we retrieve 3 million pieces of data linked to all the bookings that have been made.
Aren't companies simply looking at the cost of the agency, rather than the added value of each player?
T. D.-G. - For a long time, the only thing that a TMC could offer in comparison with its competitors was lower costs. Our industry is suffering from a lack of supply, and we can't be the only ones to make this market evolve; other agencies will have to get on board. Our industry is in danger if it is unable to offer a genuine alternative, broad enough to change the way users think.
