Australian travel technology company Aeronology has announced the launch of ‘The Travel Advisors’ – A new retail travel strategy and brand that the company says aims to entice back talented travel agents who have left the industry due to COVID disruptions.
Aeronology says it made a strategic decision to move into travel retail branding and affiliate services after industry experts advised him that, pre-COVID, there were more than 35,000 Travel Advisors in Australia and around 6000 in New Zealand, with estimates suggesting that approximately only 20 per cent had stayed in the industry, with the rest finding other employment or going into hibernation.
“We have done an incredible amount of research on how we can retrieve the retail/leisure/corporate/cruise travel expertise back in the industry while this terrible COVID situation washes through the population,” says Russell Carstensen, Chief Executive Officer, and co-founder of Aeronology.
“Now that’s a huge group of highly trained travel experts,” Mr Carstensen explains. “They are travel advisors who have a very large number of traveller connections and contacts.
“It’s also a worldwide issue as well, and potentially our Travel Advisor affiliate program will go global over the next few years as we plug into quality business partners in each region.”
Mr Carstensen adds: “Our research told us that these Travel Advisors want to get back into travel, it’s what they love, it’s what they are good at, although slowly – maybe even casually at first – then potentially part-time, and then full time.
“The biggest obstacle for that return in most cases is access to the basic needs, the tools of the trade for a Travel Advisor: the GDS, Ticketing, Traveller Profile databases, the newly launched NDC and LCC access, Mid Office, and a brand that they can be part of, a fully inclusive travel community again.
“There was a brutal and swift reduction of amazing travel advisors in many national travel brand businesses in the first half of 2020, mostly through quickly enforced redundancies and shop closures. There is a lot of lingering pain, mental health issues and anger out there, thus we wanted to create a caring, inclusive community of travel experts. Hence the reason we created The Travel Advisors,” Mr Carstensen says.
Aeronology owns the brand and the technology, and have signed an agreement with Express Travel Group (ETG) to help and manage the ticketing in Australia and New Zealand.
“As the market opens and there is stability in the supplier network, we will connect with many of them, such as hotel aggregators, rail, insurance and other travel activities and have them as part of our low-cost network,” says Mr Carstensen.
Mr Carstensen says the big restriction is the cost of starting again and, as all travel businesses and travel advisors know only too well, it’s not easy and can be very expensive.
“This is where ‘The Travel Advisors’ business model will provide all the needs of each advisor… they can choose any GDS, and they will get access to all Aeronology applications.
“These include a Traveller Profile database. The advisor owns their own client database and no one else can use it without their approval. Traveller profiles is a critical piece of intellectual property that should only be owned by the travel advisors, we ensure that this is the case, and every single travel advisor gets their own exclusive traveller database. It’s their property and potentially one they can sell to other travel advisors as they retire from the industry.”
Additionally, the Aeronology applications include shopping, booking, and ticketing on all GDS’s, plus Direct Connect via NDC, and even LCC’s (Low-Cost Carriers) with the first being Jetstar. The Advisor will have access to a connected Mid Office system, the TravelCheck services, and all contracts that can be negotiated via The Travel Advisors team and all at-source commissions are paid to the travel advisor.
“The travel advisor will receive their own ‘The Travel Advisors’ email address and have access to any improvements that are planned via the Aeronology platform. Advisors will be running their own business and, apart from providing a world-class booking engine and connected services, we stay out of the way.
“Even if a travel advisor is working part-time doing $500,000 TTV (Total Transaction Value) a year at 10% margin, it’s profitable because of the lower cost of sale and near non-existent overheads,” Mr Carstensen says.
“We expect our applications would allow a travel advisor working full time, having a good client base, and using our applications, to potentially generate anything above $3.5 million of TTV. If you apply the same margins, that’s $350,000 per year.”
The Travel Advisors can work as an individual, they are able to pull friendship groups of individual travel experts together no matter where they are in the world and work together as a Unit/Shop or Advisor Community.
“Additionally, ‘The Travel Advisors’ can potentially be members of other consortia … it’s that flexibility that drives our business model,” Mr Carstensen explains. “Generally, the personality types who work as travel advisors are multi-skilled, flexible, can handle and manage complex situations and people and are very sociable. These are just some of the reasons that former travel advisors are so loved in their new non-travel industry jobs.”
To apply to join, Advisors will need to have a recent travel history and experience of being a travel expert, also an ABN, an IATA TIDS number, which is free.
“We ask that Advisors join AFTA/ATAS as ‘The Travel Advisors’ are not liable for any debt.” Mr Carstensen says.
There is no sign-up fee to join and a monthly subscription of AUD/NZD $350 to access the platform and tools.
The membership program will open in May 2022.
Contact enquiry@aeronology.travel for more information.