Academy dinner on how to be an OTA

The first of a series of Travel Academy dinner events, hosted by TravPax, will be launched 4 April in Singapore at the Pan Pacific Hotel.
Invitations went out to top travel agencies over the weekend with a cut-off date for confirmations set for 11 March.
Organised by Bangkok-based Insourceasia, TravPax’s inaugural academy dinner event will focus on the challenges facing travel agents when they switch from a traditional trading model to an online agency platform in the B2C & B2B areas. It will also provide valuable tips on building a OTA platform.
“Everyone wants to be in the online market,” said TravPax Solutions CEO, Laurent Maytal. “It is obvious that the younger generation don’t even talk on the phone anymore , but just exchange texts and messages in social media or other web chat platforms. They will not queue up in a travel agency to purchase holidays or simple air tickets. They want it online, available any time at their own convenience and their way of shopping.
“Travel Agents are aware of that, but they are not sure how to transform their brand into a successful online presence and we do see them making the same mistakes when they try to compete with major OTAs instead of creating online their one niche market same as they did offline for many years.”
TravPax is a product of Insourceasia a travel technology solutions company founded in 2010. It rolled out TravPax in 2011 for customer Centrepoint Hospitality, a serviced apartment group in Thailand.
TravPax Solutions support travel agents to implement an OTA system in as little as two months with B2C & B2B websites and also mobile platform. It comes with a pipeline to an unlimited number of wholesale hotels suppliers with auto selection of the cheapest available rate and offer cheaper rates than any other OTA can supply.
Travel agents can connect directly to global distribution systems to offer air fares, connect to transport companies, car rental, cruises, entrance to attracions sites and basically sell products online as standalone or as components of packages.
TravPax claims that a costly enterprise some years back is now available on a cloud basis with very low monthly costs.
“So basically technology wise we are there, but nonetheless agents are still facing challenges on how to switch and how to promote themselves,” TravPax CEO explained. “This is why we are launching the TravPax Academy that will run every few months in different locations…industry leaders share their own experience so others can learn and to understand better.”
Part of InsourceAsia, TravPax is a Cloud Travel management and distribution System, that allows travel agents and inbound operators to manage inventories and rates from one side and distribute it via websites B2B or B2C from the other side.
In Thailand, TravPax lists more than 12 travel agency customers including Exotissimo Travel, Oriental Travels, Worldwide Destinations Asia.
It acts as an inventory management system, allowing clients to store and manage direct agreements for all products in a company/s database or from third party suppliers via XML.

Sourced: ttrweekly