Letters: Agencies Are Less Than Honest In Reporting Sales Figures
As president of Tzell Travel, I have long been a regular and avid reader of Business Travel News.
Because of your publication's justifiable reputation for timely and accurate reporting, I, my colleagues, clients, peers and prospects—as well as other industry observers—use your articles and reports as input when making a wide range of business decisions. This reputation for credibility that your publication has worked so long and hard to achieve can be a double-edge sword.
As you surely know, one of your most anticipated annual reports is the listing of travel agencies, ranked by air sales (Business Travel News, May 28).
These figures, which are submitted by the travel agencies, are difficult to verify and, therefore, must be a source of frustration for Business Travel News to have to publish them without the same high level of fact-checking that you employ before publishing other information.
In a perfect world, all agencies would provide you with honest and accurate sales figures. Unfortunately, as we know, this is not a "perfect world" and many highly competitive travel agencies—like many highly competitive golfers—are less than honest about their scores.
Some agencies are over-reporting sales by a factor of two or more. These agencies are capitalizing on your publication's credibility to support their own less-than-accurate and often over-inflated air sales numbers.
For the sake of your publication's ongoing reputation for timely and accurate reporting, I urge you to consider being as diligent in checking and verifying the facts relating to agencies' figures as you are about the other facts your editors publish. I, for one—and as a starting point to get the "credibility ball" rolling—will be proud to sign a release so that the Airlines Reporting Corp. can verify, or even provide you with, our annual tickets sales.
I hope the chief executives of all the other travel agencies in your annual listing will be similarly disposed.
Please, put this critical issue to rest once and for all and use the Airlines Reporting Corp. to verify the sales figures that you publish.
Barry Liben
Tzell Travel
New York
Tom Wilkinson's article "Managers Must Strike Right Automated/Agent Balance" (Business Travel News, June 25) started off my morning with a deep sigh.
Our company is a large consolidator of domestic, transborder and international air products, with a client base comprised solely of retail travel agents.
For several years now, we have been developing, using and providing to our clients on a complimentary basis an automated solution that enables them to obtain quotes, book files, order tickets and cancel files involving domestic or transborder itineraries. No longer does a costly retail resource need to contact a costly wholesale resource to enact a simple transaction. Both parts of the equation benefit from increased efficiency, accuracy and cost-effectiveness, and leave agents to do what they find most rewarding: research, consultation and problem solving. That is definitely the theory.
In reality, the balance of which Tom speaks is very delicate and he made a direct hit on target when he said that the trick is recognizing when and how to involve people and, furthermore, when and how to graciously manage that when people use automation rather than continue in the more costly stream of using human resources.
Human beings flourish with human contact and we must remember not to be so mesmerized by new and emerging technologies that we lose sight of what our industry is really providing—the facilitation of bringing people together.
Heather Forsyth
Aventours
Ottawa, Canada