Jamie Biesiada
On average, 11% of an agency's total gross bookings come from air, according to the agency owners and managers who participated in Travel Weekly's Travel Industry Survey.
Air falls behind ocean cruises and all-inclusive resorts in terms of gross bookings. Those are, of course, typically more expensive products, but there are a lot of advisors who don't like to book air -- or simply won't. However, that number could increase in the future thanks to a new wave of initiatives and products designed to get agents booking their clients' flights.
Avoiding air bookings is pretty common. A summer 2023 survey by Travel Weekly found that more than one in five respondents (22.5%) said they don't book air, and that number may have been weighted because the survey's sole focus was booking air; other industry surveys have indicated there is a greater percentage of advisors who avoid the practice.
It's not too surprising. Air bookings can mean a lot of work, especially when something goes wrong in transit. Air was already a complicated landscape, compounded even more by the addition of NDC content. And, of course, there is the dreaded debit memo.
But not booking a client's air is, in a lot of cases, a disservice.
There has been an increased emphasis in democratizing air bookings in the travel advisor community in recent years, and that's a good thing.
Some agencies and networks have had in-house air desks for ages, but lately more are following suit. Avoya Travel in 2022 introduced an air booking platform with an air desk, for instance. On the consortium level, Ensemble announced its own air desk last fall.
There are also booking tools designed to provide advisors a consumerlike air booking experience, making it easier from a technical perspective.
In the case of Snap, an easy-to-use tool developed by Internova Travel Group and Sabre that's being used by Internova's Travel Leaders Network (TLN), it also eliminates the risk of debit memos.
"Snap is really designed as a low-low-risk product for them," TLN president John Lovell said. "It does offer commission opportunities, because they are taking advantage of our parent company's air agreements. But we're the ones taking on the risk, so we're the ones doing the fulfillment. We're handling all the QC problems. So we're taking that risk right off the table from them."
Lindsay Pearlman, TLN's COO, said Snap also integrates GDS and NDC content, taking that burden off advisors.
Importantly, it solves the problem of disservice to clients.
"Why in God's name would we want a member to say, 'I booked the cruise or the tour, but then I let them do air, and I let them go to Expedia'?" said Stephen McGillivray, chief product marketing officer for Internova. "Imagine that -- letting your customer go to a competitor of yours."
Snap, he argues, solves the issue: It enables full service from advisors in an environment that's easy to navigate and carries little risk.
Sabre has made the technology behind Snap, Sabre Red Launchpad, available to all agencies. Other technology is coming online, too, to help further solve this issue for a broader community of advisors. Air desks are proliferating.
Whatever method is used, hopefully this is the spark for even more advisors to step into the realm of air to provide more complete travel planning.
It engenders loyalty. It sparks repeats and referrals. It feeds into the overall health of the industry.
From wheels up to touchdown, I hope more advisors take control of their client's full experience.