Why does your travel agency need a website?

“While technology is important, it is what we do with it that truly matters”.

In Spain, 84% of travel agencies have a website, according to a recent study from Amadeus Spain. Not too bad, you may think; however a closer look reveals several issues.

Six out of ten websites are merely information sites, with no e-commerce functionalities. Visitors can neither search nor book flights or hotel rooms. These sites respond, in a way, to the need to have some kind of online presence. It might be a laudable effort, made by small, traditional travel agencies with scarce resources and plenty of good will, but remember Muhammad Yunus: while technology is important, it is what we do with it that truly matters.

This is the philosophy that stands behind Move On (in Spanish) an e-commerce program recently launched by Amadeus Spain, which seeks to help travel agencies embrace e-commerce with the same professionalism that they show every day in the offline channel.

We don’t want to offer just a product or a tool; our goal is to help Spanish travel agencies build their online business , and that is much more than designing and developing a website. It also involves consultancy and strategy.

In fact, our program covers four steps. During the consultancy phase we conduct a thorough analysis of the travel agency business and their current online presence. We analyze the products they want to sell, the providers they have, the destination or type of clients they work with, and their competitors, together with the travel agency’s e-commerce objectives.

The second step has to do with strategy. We help our clients build the right online strategy and we implement services such as internet advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), e-mail marketing and social media strategies that fit the client´s needs.

Web creation is the third phase; it involves design and development of the client´s website, powered with the best technology and booking engines and including the integration of the travel agency´s content providers.

The last step is content management, development of marketing campaigns and reporting. In short, a complete program to accompany travel agencies in their online venture.

An adventure where the relevance is not in the technology itself, but in what travel agencies do with it: increase profitability by building a new communication and distribution channel for their clients.