Travel Bulletin
Travel Bulletin 
?And breathe ? the AITO Agents? Domestic Conference (10-11 January) is done and dusted for this year ? and I finally got my first decent night?s sleep of 2015 at the weekend!
New payment technology could save travel businesses costs and time.
Maybe 2015 will be the year for Travel Agents to focus on technology to further help their ROI?
Apps and mobile-optimised websites are playing increasingly important roles in the marketing strategy of companies in the travel industry.
Organisations have never had so much customer information; yet in many cases they have never had less idea about how to achieve effective customer engagement ? digital commerce marketing may be data rich but it is often insight, and invariably, action poor.
With the Huffington Post earlier this year declaring customer services to be ?one of the last frontiers of sustainable competitive advantage?, and behavioural research company TARP revealing the true potential of poor service ? a dissatisfied customer on average tells 12 people who then tell six more people each ? the importance of customer service has never been greater to travel firms.
The basics of the package holiday have changed little in 60 years and, having failed to adapt to changes in the consumer landscape, this once-classic holiday format has become less desirable among today?s demanding holiday-makers. During the package holiday heyday of the late 1990s more than 20 million were being sold every year, but this figure has been steadily decreasing ever since.
