Notes: Access to this portal would be by invitation or application of tour operators or wholesalers. Supplier listings on this site would also be by invitation or application to ensure quality assurance and the listings should be based on a paid listings scheme. Application form.
| USER NAME | |
|
PASSWORD |
|
|
|
|
Benefits
Free membership!
Access products and services information that is aimed exclusively at the travel
trade
Use exclusive travel-trade directories to research and create new packages
New Travel Trade Members, please apply here. Note: This will require a special application form.
Notes:
Ideas for a Travel Trade Industry Portal on the Canadian Travellers' Centre Website
Website Portals for the Travel Trade Industry
The database for the Travel Country Roads Canada website should include a portal to the Industry that is ‘user name and password’ protected and available only by invitation. This would include two separate sites one for tour operators where they would have access to those willing to offer 15 to 20% and one for qualified wholesalers where 30 and 35% commissions are offered. Primary suppliers and tour operators already trading in the international markets should be listed. A system of certification/qualification for operator reliability etc. should be discussed for listings operations that are in the starting gate.
A separate portal for travel agents, accessible with existing agency ID numbers, could be developed for the database of operations offering 10%.
Promotional Listings for the Travel Trade
Paid listing for tour operators and travel agents should be included in the website.
Some background information for those not familiar with the Travel Trade
Moving Tourism Products to Market
The tourism product market chain is rather complicated with respect to the various levels of packaging and the routes of buying and selling through the tourism trade industry before reaching the consumer. Some examples are demonstrated at the following Product Flow Chart. However, the product chain can be somewhat simplified by considering tourism suppliers as primary, secondary, tertiary or quaternion suppliers/sellers. Primary product is product offered by primary suppliers.
Primary suppliers can offer
a simple, solitary product such as a hotel room or a ticket to a festival,
a packaged product that has one or more additional components, such as bed and breakfast, or
more than one primary suppliers can collaborate to produce collaborative primary packaged products, such as B&B and golf package or lodge to lodge snowmobiling package.
Primary products are sold directly to the consumer or through various portals of the tourism trade before reaching the consumer.
However, a tour operator could also organize the latter, buying the individual primary products and selling the packaged product directly to the consumer or through various other portals of the tourism trade.
Tour operators can also build packages by combining any combination of primary products, secondary products and even tertiary products from other tour operators. The limiting factor to reselling tertiary level and higher packages is the narrowing profitability gap of dividing the commission.
Finally, or perhaps firstly, the most important market is the consumers who act independently to assimilate travel information and custom build their own travel packages of primary products or discover or buy Canadian secondary or tertiary products.
Products must be prices competitively for specific markets if a business expects to get market share. The trade industry expects that their retail price for a primary product is the same as the retail price listed by the primary supplier. Generally, each level within the travel trade requires a commission of 10%. Accordingly, primary suppliers must be willing to offer travel agents 10% at one end of the scale and wholesalers 30-35% at the other end of the scale, where the justification might be to take advantage of the wholesaler’s huge network of international tour operators and their respective network of travel agencies.
Industry trade relations are based on fair value for goods and services and guaranteed quality and delivery at every level of exchange. Performance and quality control are the underpinnings of the Industry. Buyers’ reputations and businesses ride on each and every supplier. Tourism regions,’ including whole Nations,’ reputations ride on each and every supplier, threatened by negative word-of-mouth advertising and negative media attention in our ‘global village.’ These dependencies make unreliability the nightmare of the whole industry.
Add to this the global competition for tourist dollars and the stakes to achieve high Industry standards are again raised.
If we are serious about succeeding and competing on the world market, comprehensive, all-inclusive health and safety standards and aesthetic quality rating systems must be developed, implemented and enforced for the spectrum of tourism products. The sectors of the Industry, with the support of governments, must resound the necessity of hospitality and customer service and bring their peer pressure to bear to ensure that all operators take hospitality seriously. All operators must not only realize, the benefits to their own operation but also the collective benefits to the businesses in their area. And most important, the dire impact of a negative customer experience on the other businesses in their area and the Industry as a whole - “One can fill a basket with apples but only one bad apple spoils the lot.” To start with, every tourism organization needs to, once again, bring the essence of hospitality to the forefront, i.e. the Tourism Industry is the ‘Hospitality Industry.’ Government grant programs offered to tourism organizations, aimed at putting hospitality back into the industry, would get members brainstorming, revisiting the topic, rebuilding enthusiasm and hopefully coming up with effective innovative ideas.
EU regulations make participation in European markets a challenge, as customers can sue for damages if they are sold a substandard trip.
Normally it takes a few years to develop entry into the travel trade involved in this market. Those that feel they are ready for the overseas market, i.e. have a quality package and have a history of consistently delivering their packages, should probably first seek to develop working relationships with domestic regional receptive tour operators to get a foot in the door.