Northstar

TECHNOLOGY www.travelweeklyweb.com Online strategy – more than just transactions Other focuses should also include customer engagement to build loyalty By Ming Foong, Director of OTA, APAC, Travelport www.travelweeklyweb.com The rapid shift of consumer purchasing habits from offline to online meant that all businesses need to consider incorporating an online strategy into their overall business objectives. In Asia, we have outpaced the rest of the work in mobile commerce adoption too, which is another motivator for travel agents to leverage on this shift in consumer behavior. Going online does not necessarily mean to incorporate an online transactional capability only. Travel agencies can start their online strategy by using it as a customer engagement tool to build loyalty, or a customer acquisition tool to generate leads for retail outlets. Of course, to allow time poor travelers to shop and book on your website at any time and any place is the main goal, as it meets customer needs as well as reduces considerable operational cost. My team also looks at ways to help improve an online agent's success rate. Once a consumer starts his/her online purchasing cycle by reviewing options and building itineraries, improving the search result relevancy is key to reduce sales drop-out rates. Travelport recently launched a new product, the Search Control Console, to help agents dynamically customize the results they want without incurring huge development costs such as changing codes. Our flagship shopping product, Travelport e-Pricing, has a sophisticated search algorithm which has been proven to return great result diversity, allowing agents to have more choice in curating their products on offer. The above is by no means limited to air content. With the growing need to increase margin in a competitive industry, easy access to high margin content such as hotel and ancillary products is key for travel agents. As a travel technology firm, our Open Platform strategy is to allow online travel agents to significantly increase efficiency and reduce cost whilst offering travelers more choice through growing their travel content. Through Travelport Universal API, with a single code base, our OTA customers can have access to multiple content feeds such as air, hotel, GDS content or selected Low Cost Carrier content. JANUARY 2014 | TRAVELWEEKLY ASIA ■ | 7

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