PATH to Work One-on-One With Vendors (3/06/09, Travel Trade)
Fri Mar 06 2009, by Nick Verrastro
Working one-on-one with suppliers and educating Home Based agents about the Host agency sector are among the objectives set for 2009 by the Professional Association of Travel Hosts (PATH), the group’s president Andi Mysza told Travel Trade.
PATH also plans to sponsor the first Host Agency Symposium, Oct. 5-6, in Atlantic City, NJ. The symposium is open to all Host agencies, whether or not they are PATH members, Mysza said, adding that it will focus on issues common to professional Host agencies. PATH plans to make this an annual event.
PATH aims this year to work one-on-one with suppliers ironing out issues that affect the Host agency channel, including the thorny one of providing business development and sales rep services at the local level to Home Based affiliates of nationwide Host organizations, said Mysza.
For example, Mysza’s company Mtravel.com, based in California, might have an affiliate in Florida who is planning a cruise night and wants to have a cruise line sales rep at the event, but the Florida-based sales rep doesn’t get credit and rewarded for that agent’s sales because they go through MTravel in California. So unless the rep is a personal friend of that agent, the rep would not cover the cruise night since there is no reward for it.
Norwegian Cruise Line and the Globus Family of Brands have resolved the issue of providing services to local Home Based affiliates by adjusting the way they measure productivity for the sales managers to account for the local HBAs.
“The issue ultimately gets down to compensation structure for the BDMs,” said Mysza and resolving this important issue for Home Based agents will depend on adjustment to the compensation systems within the supplier’s structure.
Along with working on issues, PATH also wants to educate suppliers about the efficiencies and sales increases they can gain by working through Host agencies to reach the growing number of Home Based travel sellers.
“We can be an efficient distribution channel for them, reaching large numbers of agents. Every Host has their own preferreds and they can very effectively steer sales and drive volume to their preferreds,” said Mysza, adding that suppliers should reach out to Hosts that are truly operating as Host agencies.
Suppliers have come up with “all kinds of structures” within their organizations to handle the growing Home Based sector, but dealing with HBAs on a one-to-one basis can be very inefficient, and that is why the Host agency can be a more effective way to tap into the HBA network, said Mysza.
Home Based agents, she said, “can’t be ignored and they certainly are kind of a wave of the future but contacting them is like trying to find a needle in the haystack.”
Both the recessionary economy and demographics, noted Mysza, are producing a new wave of entrants into the Home Based side.
As brick-and-mortar agencies consolidate, experienced agents are taking their client lists and opening Home Based businesses.
Also, second careerists, especially preretirement baby boomers, are establishing businesses that will provide them income and flexibility during the imminent retirement years.
New entrants, Mysza said, are coming in from the real estate, mortgage and financial planning industries.
A number of them are “people who are five years from retirement and want to get a business established for their retirement years. I like those people because they are good planners and have sales and people skills - they get it totally. It is pretty easy to teach travel but hard to teach someone to be a good sales person or about good customer service. You have either developed those skills or you have not.”
These new entrants, Mysza added, are “people who have a passion for travel and they see their Home Based business as a good alignment with their personal interest. There is nothing but up side to this. You’ll see sales growth among new entrants - not just moving an agent’s sales from storefront to Home Based, but a definite growth. They are commission-driven and very self-motivated.”
Along with educating suppliers about the Host channel and PATH itself, the organization is also seeking to inform travel agents about the credibility of PATH Host agencies, which must meet a series of membership requirements for both financial strength and experience.
Host agencies in PATH “have passed rigorous background checks and one of our main objectives is to get out our message about who we are, to generate awareness of what PATH is and what we are all about,” said Mysza.
“The objective is to be the ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval’ for Host agencies because we are the only ones that have met specific criteria.”
The organization also wants to double its membership this year from 16 to about 30 Host agencies. Some members were dropped because they no longer met the PATH financial criteria, said Mysza. “We think there are fewer than 100 Hosts that would qualify for membership,” she said.
PATH has forged “very nice working relationships” with OSSN and NACTA, both of which represent Home Based agents, as well as with CLIA, Mysza said.
“We have had a couple of meetings with CLIA. They want to work with us to get their training in the hands of our agents and we want to help them tighten up their membership requirements,” she said.
The organization is also “opening the door” to a relationship with ARC (Airlines Reporting Corporation) working to re duce and eliminate fraud and with IATAN, which Mysza credited with offering the best agent ID program.
As to the Joystar bankruptcy, Mysza said that gave the entire retail travel industry a black eye - not just Host agencies.
“It impacts the entire industry and all agencies in addition to all Hosts - it puts a black eye on a lot of us,” she said.
“The thing that is really difficult for agents involved in the bankruptcy is that they could not move future bookings to a new Host. That was and still is a big problem. The moral of the story is that agents shouldn’t be chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but should look at their Host as a long-term partner and seek financially strong long-term partners. That is what it all comes down to.”
Mysza added, “If a Host is not strong financially, they won’t be there for the agents. If they are not profitable, they can’t pay their people and don’t have the staff to support their agents. It all gets down to profitability. We hope that people have learned from this, even those who weren’t involved in it, and that they seek out the reputable and legitimate Hosts out there.”
