In contrast, the new technologies offer a number of opportunities to tourism firms, since merely entering the Internet produces an expansion in the business that many firms would find difficult to achieve in the traditional way. The new technologies are becoming progressively cheaper, and the marginal cost of providing the service to one new customer is lower on the Internet than it would be through traditional channels. If the firm manages to attract a large enough portfolio of customers, it will be able to achieve a return on its initial investment. Another opportunity opened up by the new technologies is the possibility of turning relationships with customers into something much more personal, individualizing the tourism product to extremes that would be practically impossible to achieve in the real world.
The new technologies will also allow already-established firms to use their mass of traditional customers as a starting point for their move into the Internet. These firms undoubtedly have a competitive advantage in this respect over the new firms starting up directly as dotcoms. ICT also eliminates geographic barriers, allowing firms to attract potential customers who would otherwise be unable to use their services because of the distance.
Finally, the new technologies will allow firms to combine their offer of tourism products with non-tourism products. The tourism firm can use portals to become a means of accessing other e-commerce products that would be difficult to com- mercialize in more traditional ways.
Consequently, the new technologies will also provide many benefits for consumers of tourism products, such as: greater price transparency, the possibility of a per- sonalized offer, improved visual and graphical information (video, photos, maps, street plans, interactive products, etc.), absence of geographic and temporal barri- ers, greater power of decision, and more information, ability to compare different products, time savings, less need to reserve in advance, and cheaper products, thanks to lower production costs.
Recommendations.for.Tourism-Sector.Firms
Pioneers in adapting themselves to these technologies normally become more competitive and increase their market share, so their global position in the tourism market improves. Firms that prove unable to adjust to the new technologies, in contrast, will lose weight in the tourism market, becoming increasingly left behind until their very survival is threatened. In this respect, tourism firms will need to develop multi-channel strategies that include all the intermediaries of the new e-
tourism (Internet, fixed-line and mobile telephone, and digital television) to be able to respond adequately to market demands. Firms that continue to work exclusively with the traditional intermediaries (such as the GDS systems, or videotext) will see their customer portfolio progressively decline over time, along with their value.
There are arguments against the disintermediation phenomenon. These include:
travel agencies are professional advisers, and they offer valuable services; travel agencies use their experience to save consumers time; the technology is difficult to use and costly for individual consumers; many consumers are not very computer literate, and, over time, the increasing complexity of these systems will demand even more such knowledge from the users; travel agencies offer free advice, and their advice adds value; the electronic intermediaries mainly serve the business market, and are more expensive; traditional agencies may be able to get more competitive prices through the right channels and agreements; the agencies provide consumers with human contact with the tourism industry; travel agencies limit the insecurity of travel if they take responsibility for all the agreements; and online transactions are not yet secure enough, and this is a concern for potential customers (as shown by the fact that consumers often use the Internet to look for information and consult availability, but close their transactions and pay in more traditional ways).
The traditional intermediaries will not disappear en masse. Only those that prove unable to adapt to the new situation, to consider e-commerce as another channel among their marketing strategies, to exploit the opportunities e-commerce opens up, or to provide the consumer of tourism products and services with value will inevitably disappear.
Thus, the new information and communication technologies will not end all tourism intermediation, but they will lead to important adjustments. The distribution channel will tend to shrink, new types of intermediaries will emerge, and firms that are not able to adapt to the new situation generated by the newcomers will disappear. This is the context in which BookingFax, a firm of recent creation, has proved able to adapt to the changes in the sector by using the new information technologies.
Setting.the.Stage
Before BookingFax entered the market, firms distributed information by fax. This is a very quick and reliable tool, but it did have its limitations, such as the loss of some faxes and the problem of data storage. The founders of the firm thought that they could solve these problems by using the Internet, as well as improve the speed of the system and increase its capacity of communication. What they conceived was a way to combine two well-known and highly related concepts that had rarely been able to exploit each other before—tourism and technology.
BookingFax stores information from the wholesalers, and makes it available to the travel agencies easily, comfortably, and directly, thanks to computer programs specifically created for information storage. In the past, when, for example, a cruise wholesaler offered something, it had to send faxes to all the travel agencies to com- municate the offer. With BookingFax’s arrival in the market, the wholesaler can now send the information to BookingFax by Internet, and BookingFax stores the information and distributes it to the travel agencies that are licensed to access the system. BookingFax thereby acts as an intermediary.
The main advantage that the entrepreneurs found was that practically all the retail firms – the travel agencies – had Internet-connected computers in their offices, which BookingFax would use to communicate with them. Thanks to this tool, communi- cation is much quicker, and the agencies can put wholesalers’ offers immediately to the final customers. This connection between one link in the value chain and the other is what was missing in the tourism sector before the advent of BookingFax.
The function that BookingFax assumes soon found widespread acceptance in the sector.
Initially, the tour operators, agencies, and consumers were largely unaware of the existence of BookingFax in the market, so the firm needed to launch a strong advertising campaign. After its first six months of life, the firm already controlled 50% of the information in the Spanish tourism sector.
Case.Description
BookingFax’s system for communicating travel offers electronically is a platform of electronic supports designed to disseminate travel offers on the Internet. Each support in the system facilitates the processes of distribution between tourism services providers, travel agencies, corporate customers, and consumers, as can be seen in Figure 1.
This system gathers together the products offered by travel wholesalers, tour opera- tors, reservations centers, airline companies, hotel chains, independent hotels, and tourist apartments. The system can then classify the offers by category and distribute them to the appropriate support depending on the user.
The system fundamentally has two advantages. On one hand, BookingFax’s method significantly reduces the providers’ communications costs, and, at the same time, it simplifies the retail agencies’ work in terms of information and management. On the other hand, the firm’s absolute independence with respect to the intermediaries and producers in the tourism sector, the number of users who consult the system, the continuing innovation of the process of communicating via the network, and
the proven efficacy of the electronic system compared to the use of fax or e-mail, have converted BookingFax into the leading electronic communications medium of travel offers in the Spanish retail sector.
The supports that form part of the BookingFax platform were designed to facilitate information flows between all the actors in the tourism market; each of these actors has a dedicated tool suited to its needs. In this way, the core BookingFax system functions as a tool that is free to access and designed to help the travel agent man- age the offers coming in from the service providers and make all types of technical information available. The following services complement this core system:
• TravelOfertas: This is a portal for the consultation of offers directed at the consumers. Travelofertas (Traveloffers) helps final consumers to plan their trips, and excludes offers that consumers can purchase directly from the provider in order to force the user to visit the agency. The mission of this medium is to raise awareness of travel wholesalers’ products among consumers, allowing free access to the offers at the same time as they enter the exclusive market of the travel agencies. This portal has important advantages both for the agen- cies and for the consumers. For the former, the figure of the travel agency is stressed in the Internet, encouraging the user to visit any sales point in the country after choosing a particular offer, and the system can place search en- gines in the travel agency’s own Web site. With regard to the final consumer, the advantages are that the system provides real-time access to all the offers available in the market, provides users with information before visiting a travel agency, and combines the widest variety of product offers in the market.
Source: www.bookingfax.com
Figure 1. Diagram of BookingFax system
CORPORATE CUSTOMERS
TRAVEL OFFERS BOOKINGFAX
CORPORATIVO
ADAPTED TO FIRMS’ INTRANETS
BOOKINGFAX MICRO
ADAPTED TO AGENCIES’
WEBSITES
CONSUMERS
BOOKINGFAX PROVIDERS
AGENTS
AGENTS FROM
CONSUMERS
ONE GROUP
BOOKINGFAX GRUPO
ADAPTED TO IES’
INTRANETS AGENC
BOOKINGFAX TRAVEL
ADAPTED TO PROVIDERS’
WEBSITES
AGENTS &
CONSUMERS
•. Travel.Temáticos: This is a collection of portals of themed offers. In total, 17 portals for consulting offers oriented at consumers segmented by product type.
Travel Temáticos (Thematic Travel) allows consumers to access and locate products by subject matter. These portals are a response to how the demand for travel in the Internet is behaving. The demand is increasingly specialized and needs channels containing information about travel offers adapted to their particular travel interests. Among the advantages of this medium for the agen- cies are that it allows search engines of offers to be incorporated into vertical information portals, ranging from cruises or tours to offers of particular desti- nations such as Africa or the Balearic Islands. In addition, for the consumers, the portal provides real-time access to the offers available in the segment of interest in the market, provides them with information before visiting a travel agency, and offers products from the same or a similar subject category. Travel Temáticos can offer specific contents of travel offers to vertical information portals with high value added for their visitors. The offers appearing in these portals are on sale exclusively in travel agencies. An example is travelactivo.
com, which includes travel offers relating to active and adventure tourism;
ofertasdegolf.com, a portal for those wishing to practice golf on their vaca- tion; or travelnieve.com, where consumers can find information about offers for Spanish or European ski stations.
•. BookingFax.Micro: Adapted to the travel agency’s Web site, this medium allows the agencies to manage the destinations and offers, maintain a statisti- cal control of the consultations consumers make, and make reservations by Internet. BookingFax Micro is the offer search application developed to be implemented in the travel agency’s Web site, enabling the total management of all its contents and contact with the consumer through their reservation request. This service is a personalized application that automates the process of loading travel offers into the user-travel agency’s Web site. The public can then consult, on the Internet, the latest offers that have arrived in their travel agency. In function of each agency’s sales policy, BookingFax Micro automates authorized loadings and excludes other offers. The application also allows the user-agency to redefine destinations and group or ungroup products. In this case, the advantages for the agency are that its corporate image on the Inter- net is maintained, the agency has an administration program with exclusive accesses, and the system facilitates the management of the offers and of the travel providers, allows the tourist destinations to be personalized, and provides forms for requesting information and making reservations directly.
•. BookingFax.Corporativo: This service is designed to serve the corporate seg- ment. It integrates into the corporate customer’s intranet, enabling its managers and employees to look for and reserve offers managed by travel agencies. This electronic application allows travel agencies to place a medium for consulting offers in the intranet of its corporate customers, providing an important amount
of value added to its service. BookingFax Corporativo (BookingFax Corporate) is oriented to travel agencies specializing in business travel. The application, which was tested by Carlson Wagonlit Travel, is designed to be installed in the intranets of corporate customers. The travel managers or employees of the firm can use this service to consult travel offers in the market in real time, and they can reserve through the travel agency. The service allows firms to adapt the interface to suit their corporate identity, provides information to corporate customers instantly and without them needing to do anything, improves the agency’s chances of capturing corporate customers, allows the agency to keep a statistical control of the consultations by firms, provides an administration program with exclusive accesses, and allows the agency to manage the offers and the travel providers, as well as to personalize the tourism destinations.
•. BookingFax. Grupo: Adapted to the intranet of a group of agencies, this service enables the administration of users with access and the establishment of the group’s sales policy by organizing the offers according to their priority.
BookingFax Grupo (BookingFax Group) was developed to allow various travel agencies grouped under the same brand to maintain the same orientation with respect to the commercialization of the offers they publish in the system. The advantages for the agency are that the corporate identity of the group of agencies is maintained, the service provides an administration program with exclusive accesses, enables the management of the users accessing the medium, allows the group to establish the sale orientation of offers, and facilitates personalized communications with final consumers.
•. BookingFax.Travel: Integrated in the provider’s Web site, this service allows providers to make all their travel offers published in BookingFax available on their Web site without actually having to do this task themselves. This medium is designed to be included in the travel wholesaler’s Web site, which means that all tourist operators can have a platform for communicating the offers they are launching in the market. BookingFax Travel manages the provider’s corporate Web site with regards to the offers. The main advantages are for the tourist operator, since the service distributes the firm’s own offers in its Web site, has an automatic system for loading and publishing the offers, and allows the tourism provider to maintain its corporate image, as well as to personalize the tourism destinations in which it operates.