Many of us organise our own travel, but the past two years of disruption has played havoc with even the best-laid plans.
Whereas you might have once, at leisure, researched your own flight options and chosen an airline or a routing that suited, now the memory of cancelled flights and an hour on hold trying to rearrange can give you pause for thought.
The difficulties have brought the role of travel management companies (TMCs) to the fore. Simone Buckley, vice-president of EMEA marketing at Tripactions, sums up the current situation: “Travel is more complicated,” she says. “There is such volatility at the moment with flight schedules which leads to things changing so quickly.”
Buckley says that the airlines’ dynamic pricing revenue management systems mean when things change, they change rapidly, so a traveller needs “the broadest amount of information and depth of content to choose from when making decisions”.
“It’s not just about the fares, although getting a good price is important. It’s also about getting the right fare that you can change. You are not always given that information when you go direct [to the airline], but if you are using a travel management company you will have it.”
Mark Smith, chief executive of Simplexity, agrees: “There will always be cheap deals online, but you’ll see the value of a TMC when something goes wrong. Through this period we have had many phone calls from people who had already booked their flights, and were having problems and saying, ‘We wish we’d booked through you.’ We did what we could to help them. Hopefully they’ll remember us next time.”
Steve Banks, chief
