Travel extra sept 2015 6 megs

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UR O Y

BEDBANKS A GUIDE TO THE MARKET TECHNOLOGY WHO DARES WINS AVIATION WINTER OF CONTENT Greece is the word

Dublin’s record fliers

London City Airport

e d a r T PAPER

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SEPTEMBER 2015

Rooms with a view

How to stay ahead in the accommodation game

VOLUME 19 NUMBER 8

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SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 3

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Greece: no impact Agents report normal level of bookings and no lates

H

oliday bookings in Greece were unaffected by recent events according to 65pc of travel agents who participated in ITAA’s quarterly survey.

Data from the Greek Civil Aviation Authority indicates a 6.7pc increase in airport arrivals from all international markets between January and June 2015 and a 3.2pc per cent increase in June arrivals.

London-based analyst GfK Ascent reported Greek bookings for summer 2015 were up 3pc.

Spain, Portugal and Italy remain the top destinations for Irish holidaymakers.

Hotelbeds data for this summer season reveal that five out of the top six destinations for British holidaymakers are in the Med, with the US ranking second overall and Greece maintaining its third position.

Service, advice and security are the primary reasons that Irish Travel Agents see 67% of their business come from returning customers according to the latest Irish Travel Agents Association quarterly survey.

When asked how people made their

Ethiopian Airlines, our first direct flight by Dreamliner is Dublin’s first sub-Sahara Africa scheduled flight.

HELSINKI

Finnair return to the route offering through connections to China and other long haul destinations.

PEED OFF In a bid to stop people pee-

ing in the streets, San Francisco applied paint that splashes the urine back onto the offender to nine walls around the city on a trial basis.

YELLOWSTONE National Park of-

ficials warned tourists to keep their distance after a bison flipped a woman into the air as she posed for a selfie with the beast

LAS VEGAS The street performers on Las Vegas' Fremont Street have been driving tourists away, city leaders claimed this week as they moved toward imposing new rules to rein in the rowdy atmosphere. Vegas has already banned people from drinking alcohol out of glass bottles and aluminium cans on the downtown street where the party began in the 1940s.

Greek bookings were unaffected by ATM and credit card warnings holiday bookings agents reported that ‘by phone’ and ‘in store’ were the most common methods.

Commenting on the findings, Pat Dawson, CEO of the ITAA said, “Purchasing a holiday is a big commitment. Irish people like to know that there is a real person taking care of them and hand picking a holiday to

suit their specific needs. Consumers have a vast array of options when it comes to purchasing holidays nowadays but Irish customers seem to appreciate that with a travel agent their care and service won’t be managed by an algorithm”.

SEVEN ROUTES FOR AUTUMN

ADDIS Two firsts from

NEWS

LIVERPOOL

back on the Aer Lingus map for winter.

LOS ANGELES Back on the map thanks to Ethiopian.

ORLANDO

Aer Lingus summer route that is now year round for the first time.

TORONTO

now year round thanks to Air Canada Rouge, with innovations such as entertainment streaming to your device.

WASHINGTON

to continue through to January with the help of Aer Lingus and their Air Contractors b757 lease agreement.

DISNEY unveiled the details of its $5.5bn Shanghai Disneyland theme park, planned since 2009 and due to open spring 2016. There will be six themed lands and attractions based on Star Wars and Marvel characters, a Mandarin-language production of the Lion King live show, two resorts — Shanghai Disneyland Hotel and Toy Story Hotel — Disneytown shopping and entertainment district, and the Enchanted Storybook Castle. There will be plenty of competition: The number Chinese amusement parks is expected to reach 850 this year, and Universal Studios and Dreamworks have Chinese attractions in the pipeline.

CANADA is the country with the best reputation according to the Reputation Institute’s 2015 Country RepTrak report with Ireland just outside the top ten in 11th place. The top ten is: 2 Norway, 3 Sweden, 4 Switzerland, 5 Australia, 6 Finland, 7 New Zealand, 8 Denmark, 9 Netherlands, 10 Belgium. Ireland’s reputation improved 5.2pc in the RepTrak index, with top ten finishes in environment, desire to visit and something called the emotional halo.

CUBA’s tourism ministry announced plans to launch a Tobacco Trail in Pinar del Rio this September, showcasing the island’s cigar-making heritage.

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SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 4

THE KNOWLEDGE Travel Extra Advertising & Subscriptions 59 Rathfarnham Road Terenure Dublin 6W (+3531) 2913707 Fax (+3531) 2957417

CONTENTS 3 News Where to go, how much to pay 6 Hotels: News 8 Postcards: News from the trade

Editorial Office Clownings Straffan Co Kildare Managing Editor: Gerry O’Hare gerry@travelextra.ie Editor: Eoghan Corry eoghan.corry@ travelextra.ie Publisher: Edmund Hourican edmund@bizex.ie Sales Director: Maureen Ledwith maureen@bizex.ie Accounts and Advertising: Maria Sinnott maria@bizex.ie Picture Editor: Charlie Collins pix@travelextra.ie Sunday Supplement & Online: Conor McMahon conor@travelextra.ie Chief Features Writer: Anne Cadwallader anne@travelextra.ie Contributors : Eanna Brophy eanna@travelextra.ie Marie Carberry marie@travelextra.ie Carmel Higgins carmel@travelextra.ie Cauvery Madhavan cauvery@travelextra.ie Sean Mannion sean@grafacai.ie Ida Milne ida@travelextra.ie Catherine Murphy cathmurph@yahoo.com

Travel Extra takes no responsibility for errors and omissions.

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Printer: WG Baird Limited Caulside Drive Greystone Rd Antrim BT41 2RS Contact +35387-2551675 if you have difficulty getting Travel Extra.

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T

12 Bedbanks: Rooms with many views 22 Technology: Planes trains & GDSs 26-29 Flying: Airline and airport news 30 London City: The 15 minute airport 32 Afloat: Cruise ships get bigger

33 Travel Extra: 20 years a-growing 34 Global Village Inside the travel industry 36 Window seat: Our columnists 37 Pictures: Out and about

The dynamic duel

he number of hotel beds that are available to agents through the various booking agents is gargantuan.

Some of the most successful travel agencies in the current market are those whose business model is based on dynamic packaging. It is now 80pc of travel agents’ buisness.

All of the dynamic packaging agencies, big and small, have bespoke systems that can build millions of offers and options.

So how does a perplexed agent handle these options?

CHOOSE

your market. Either find a niche area or find where the masses are going. If you cannot think of one, four-star all-inclusive is a good place to start. Aim for the general family and couples market.

DECIDE

who you are going to work with. It is sensible to deal with a handful of decent bed banks that you trust rather than plunge into the great unknown.

No matter what supplier they are using nowadays, an agent can offer customers hundreds of thousands of hotel options at a click. Often, only a few dozen of those count in the Irish market. There are a small number of favourite hotels that crop up again and again on wish lists of Irish customers at the key destinations.

Even the most exotic locations have only a few hotels that really matter to the Irish consumer.

CAR coverage and public liability insurance.

LOOK

at the paperwork and see if it reflects what you are doing in practice. Make sure you are always acting as an agent, both on paper and off it.

INVOICE

Hotel Bernini Bristol, Rome: A satisfied customer is a repeat customer

DEVELOP

your sales technique.

Agents can still persuade customers that they are the best place to book and that they shouldn’t worry that suppliers are named on the paperwork.

DON’T

be afraid to talk price.

Even though the internet is awash with direct offers, today’s technology means a good agent can tell every customer with confidence that they can find them the best price.

When a customer looks up the internet, the price could be different to what it is in the next hour. If you look at a destination and find a good price, buy it or tell the customer to buy it. With dynamic packaging a price is likely to go up rather than down.

GET

the right technology. Better technology gives agents a lot more flexibility to offer a wider range of products. It is the key to how much product you can access and how quickly you can do so. It puts an agent in control of

their business and, more importantly their margin.

CHARGES

Ask whether the bed bank is buying its own stock or whether it is buying from another bed bank. They may have different cancellation charges, and these could be passed on to the agent without you knowing it.

KNOW

your customer, and keep it that way. A direct seller can never get to know your customer as well as you do (and many have tried and failed). No internet or online travel agent will know your local airport and its routes and its routes as you do, particularly if many operators don’t fly from there (departures from regional airports such as Kerry are cheaper than from main airports at this time of the year).

SHOW

the value of the flights you source for your customers by comparing them to more expensive ones earlier or later that day. The process if providing good value for

money starts with the best flights. It convinces the customer that you can offer a better holiday at a better price.

FEES

When you charge a consultancy fee, make sure it is clear in the price. Don’t impose your own amendment or cancellation fees.

SELL the extras. For

such an obvious way to increase commission, suppliers say many agents still do not offer products such as transfers and car hire during consultations. Agents do not make the most of what they can do when the customer is in front of them.

After sorting out the flights and accommodation, ask the simple question: what do you want to do?

diligently. It is more important than ever that agents make sure their invoicing and terms and conditions are clear, otherwise they could find themselves liable if a supplier fails. Your invoices and terms and conditions must clearly state whether you are acting as the agent or principal. In particular do not confuse booking confirmations with receipts.

KNOW

the law. Making sure you operate legally can take a significant amount of research. While dynamic packaging allows agents to compete with internet pricing, agents need to be vigilant about their adherence to legal and industry standards.

AVOID

marking up or trying to control or change the price of the products.

AVOID

picking elements of the product, bundling them up and selling them as an inclusive package.

U P G R A D E S COMPETE Use a dynamic package to get a better price or give added value to the customer. The more you add, the more value you can give.

GET

the necessary legal paperwork and business infrastructure in place, such as

If you do not have the technological might to take on the big online dynamic packaging agents, you can still use dynamic packaging to beat the agency selling packages down the road.

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SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 5

NEWS

www.travelextra.ie

Titanic task force Work Starts on new home for Holiday World Beflast

BRIGHTON

on the south coast of England, is taking the first step towards making its beaches and other public spaces nonsmoking.

DATING site Miss Travel launched an app that allows travellers to plan holidays with strangers.

USA CBP officers began using a mobile device to scan fingerprints from a sample on selected flights flying out of Atlanta. The test will be expanded inautum to Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York, San Francisco and Washington.

PARIS launched the mobile app Yes I speak touriste to help visitors find shops, hotels and attractions where their native language is spoken.

AUSTRIA banned smoking in all restau-

rants.

NORWAY Kongeveien Eiendom Spa Complex, claimed to be the largest spa in Norway, will be rebranded The Well. The facility is slated for December 2015. The Agora, claimed to be the world’s largest public sauna, opened on Sandhornøya island, Norway.

HOMESICK A survey by laterooms.com found that 60pc of business travellers suffer from homesickness, but only 8pc said this resulted in a drop in productivity.

Model Anna Bates helps prepare the Titanic conference centre

H

oliday World Show Belfast has a new venue, the new 6,000 square metre Titanic Exhibition Centre at Queen's Road.

A temporary site at Queen's Road will be ready by the autumn. Holiday World Show Belfast takes place over the weekend of January 15-17.

The development by Titanic Quarter includes plans for a permanent, purpose-built centre to cater for major international events such as those hosted by Dublin Conference Centre and RDS. Work has commenced on the initial phase of the development ona site opposite Titanic Studios. The finished centre will accommodate up to 300

exhibitors and 20,000 visitors.

It wil continue to contribute to the growth of the area, with further hotel expansion and further development on the cards to add to the 185 acres of construction and 100 companies who have put down roots in Titanic Quarter, employing thousands of people and attracting hunderds of thousands of tourists.

New hotel developments are expcted to add 500 new rooms to the quarter with the development of three new hotels, the largest of which is for a 244-bedroom property with furtehr 155 and 120-room hotels.

The Titanic Quarter currently only has one hotel, a Premier Inn located

close to the Odyssey Arena on the Queens Road.

The former Harland & Wolff headquarters and drawing offices - in which the ill-fated Titanic and more than 1,000 other ships were designed - is among the sites destined for a new lease of life as a four star boutqiue hotel.

Titanic Quarter chief executive David Gavaghan said “this is an opportune time to develop a new space in central Belfast that will allow the city to market itself as a destination for local and international consumer, lifestyle and trade events."

UNSEEN Tours, which runs tours of London given by homeless and formerly homeless guides, doubled bookings this year.

CUBA enquiries have s trebled this year among Irish people anxious to go before the American invasion of tourists commences.

ETIHAD signed an agreement with the

Tourism Authority of Thailand to promote travel from priority markets including Ireland, UAE, Belgium, France, Germany and Spain.

FRANCE ordered an outright ban on Uber after a day of nationwide protests by taxi drivers which blocked access to Paris airports.

Rock star Courtney Love claimed that her taxi driver was kidnapped.

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SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 6

HOTELS

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IRISH people give the third highest average scores when they rate hotels, according to a survey by agoda.com, behind Russia and Egypt.

Emirateans are the harshest critics of the 44 countries featured.

SMALL Luxury Hotels of the World re-

ported 25 new hotels, new, old and renovated to their curated collection of independent small hotels so far in 2015, including H Resort – Beau Vallon Beach, Mahe Seychelles already opened and Hotel Lilla Roberts, Helsinki opening August 25.

DISCOUNT

Some airlines and hotels were reported to be pulling the plug on discount websites.

HOTEL SHOW

The Independent Hotel Show at London’ Olympia West on October 20-21 reported a 20pc increase in exhibitor bookings for 2015 compared with the same stage last year.

MANOR House Hotels was appointed ac-

commodation partner of National Heritage Week. Picture shows Roisin Wallace of Manor House Hotels, Minister of State for Rural Development Ann Phelan and Michael Starrett of the Heritage Council at the launch event in the Guinness Storehouse.

LONDON

Indian billionaire Yusuffali Kadeis is to acquire Great Scotland Yard for £110m and turn it into a hotel.

MARRIOTT

International reached the 1m rooms mark in Q2. Marriott announced a partnership with the NBA.

MANDARIN

Oriental opened a hotel

in Milan.

VAIL Resorts are to combine Canyons Resort and Park City Mountain Resort under one name and logo.

IMPERIAL The Flynn family’s 125-room

Imperial Hotel in Cork has completed the first half of a renovation programme in advance of its 200th anniversary in 2016 with a new gym, for resident’s use and a brand new bar and food outlet 76 On The Mall located just off the lobby where the old South’s Bar use to be.

Hotel Kilkenny: The disparity between Kilkenny and Waterford is one of the mysteries of Irish hotel plrices

Monaco’s Grand P

T

Principality is home to Europe’s dearest hotels

he usual suspects topped Trivagio’s July European Hotel Price Index.

Monaco was the heavyweight champion with €432 Geneva’s average price for July is €284, followed

by London at €263 and Venice at €250.

The tHPI shows the average price in Euro for a standard double room, based on the 50 most popular European cities on trivago within the European online hotel market: the overnight accommodation prices of 262 online travel agents and hotel chains create the average hotel prices for cities, regions and countries within Europe.

Prices for a standard double room

ARKUS LUTHE, CEO of the Ger-

man Hotel Association (pictured), claimed that the recent announcement that Expedia will follow Booking.com in amending rate-parity agreements with hoteliers in Europe to allow them to post cheaper rates with other third-party online travel agencie are “just another bluff. Booking.com allows the hotel to offer a lower price on Expedia than on Booking.com but not on the hotel website. Expedia allows the hotel to offer a lower price on Booking.com than on Expedia but not on the hotel website. In practice, paritygrid is set in stone for the hotelier by the two giants,”

ASHFORD Castle was voted the world’s number three hotel by Travel + Leisure readers.

AMADEUS

acquired hotel property management systems provider Itesso BV.

AIRBNB revamped its business travel pro-

gramme with more features for travel managers

are calculated on the basis of over 2.5 million daily price enquiries for overnight hotel stays generated through the trivago hotel search. trivago stores all hotel enquiries for each month and therefore gives an overview of hotel accommodation prices for the upcoming month.

As expected, lowest prices in Eastern Europe: Warsaw € 62, Sofia € 62, Bucharest €70.

Paris prices up slightly by 1.4pc YOY to € 181. Berlin up 5pc to €102. Rome up 5pc to €136.

Barcelona up 7pc to €160. Lisbon up 5pc to €114.

Average hotel prices in Ireland increased 15pc YOY to €124. Unsurprisingly, Dublin topped the list with

an average price in Trivago’s scan of 32 search engines at €168, up 9pc YOY. Belfast, in third place behind Killarney, was up 36pc YOY largely thanks to the weakening of the euro.

Limerick had the lowest price at €99.

Galway and Kinsale saw the biggest increase compared to last month, both up 7pc MOM. The price list: , Dublin €168, Killarney €156, Belfast €147, Kenmare €146, Kinsale €146, Galway €137, Cork €122, Sligo €122, Westport €120, Derry €116, Dingle €113, Wexford €111, Tralee €110, Kilkenny €106, Waterford €104, Athlone €99, Limerick €93.

€432

EUROPEAN HOTEL PRICE INDEX €171 €154 €126 €110 €102 Florence

Stockholm

Hamburg

Tralee

€87

€284

€170

€147

€124

€109

€79

Monaco Geneva

€263 London

€250 Venice

€226 Berne

€210

Edinburgh

€181 Paris

€174 Milan

Amsterdam Nice

€168

Belfast

€146

Dublin

Kenmare Westport

€165

€143

€164

€141

€160

€139

€156

€136

Copnehagen Brighton

Barcelona Killarney

Athens

Manchester Munich Rome

€132 Oslo

Helsinki

€120 Vienna

€118

Liverpool

€116 Derry

€114 Lisbon

€113 Dingle

€111 Wexford

Frankfurt

€107 Istanbul

Berlin Lyon

€99

Athlone Madrid

€106

€98

€105

€96

€104

€95

Kilkenny Marseille Porto

Cologne Lubjana Prague Waterford

€103 Brussels

Moscow St Petersburg Budapest Kiev Malaga

€93

Limerick

€89

Valencia

Dresden Krakow

€76 Sevilla

€72

Belgrade

€70

Bucharest

€62

Sofia Warsaw ource: Trivago.ie

Page 007 News 10/08/2015 12:14 Page 1

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Year of 100 ships D

ublin port reported its busiest ever day this cruise ship season when four cruise ships arrived in town on the same day, bringing ashore a potential 10,000 passenger and 3,000 crew.

So far 60 ships have called to Dublin with 40 more before year-end.

In 2012 more than 100 ships also called, but with fewer passengers.

Two more are due to dock together on August 13 and 15, with three due on August 28.

Cruise ships will have facilities to berth and turn around at the East Link bridge under Dublin Port Company’s €230m project to extend capacity.

The Authority hopes to start construction "within months" on a following the go-ahead from An Bord Pleanála. Piling and dredging of the Liffey and the demolition of part of the North Wall extension will be part of a five year plan to open up the port to larger cruise ships and increased container traffic.

SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 7

VISITORS

NEWS

entering USA under visa waiver scheme must ALL have e-passports under new regulations. All Irish passports issued since 2006 are e-passports. Please note however that Temporary Passports, which are issued to Irish citizens who passports are lost or stolen while abroad, are not electronic.

KENYA

Tourist Board cancelled their PR deal with CNN International after their domestic sister network which portrayed Kenya as a “Hotbed of Terror.”

AWARDS Well over 200 places have

already been sold for the Irish Travel Industry Awards in the Mansion house on January 21.

Bus awaits cruise ship passengers in Dublin port The new plan will allow with the depth of the river increased from seven to 10 metres. Unitl now the bigger cruise ships had to reverse up the Liffey and access is restricted by tides.

As part of the proposal the Dublin Port Company will give €1.6m and

10.5 hectares of land it owns on Bull Island to Dublin City Council which plans to construct a visitors centre there.

The new plan is also designed to cater for a projected doubling of container traffic to 60 million tonnes by 2040.

NY IN AN HOUR The US Patent and Trademark Office has approved an application from Airbus for a hypersonic jet, which it says will travel at speeds as high as Mach 4.5, or four-and-a-half times the speed of sound. That means the Airbus jet could make the transatlantic run to New York in an hour.

AMADEUS has acquired US based Hotel SystemsPro by Amadeus subsidiary Newmarket.

THOMSON

Cruises has become the first in the UK to successfully defend a law suit by a group of passengers following a norovirus outbreak onboard one of its ships.

Free th nking ble independent A Fresh Approach As an independent airport we have a fresh approach to doing business with our customers. With more flights, more destinations and more choice it’s time you gave Shannon some fresh thought.

Isabel Harrison isabel.harrison@shannonairport.ie +353 (0)61 712 629

Isabel Harrison Shannon Airport

You’ll love doing bu siness with u s

Declan Power declan.power@shannonairport.ie +353 (0)61 712 403

shannonairport.ie

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SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 8

POSTCARDS FROM THE TRAVEL SCENE

S

pain’s Tourist Board organised a elebration of San Fermin in Dublin’s Morgan Hotel.

Gonzalo Ceballos director of the Spanish Tourist Board in Dublin said travel to Spain was growing at 7.4pc in 2015 off the highest base iun the disuytry.

Last year Spain amounted to 24pc of nights spent abroad by Irish residents last year.

D

erva O’Neill, formerly of the ITAA, has taken on the task of marketing the visitor experience in the GHQ building at the IFSC in Dublin’s north side.

Epic Ireland, funded by the Downpatrick born former Coca Cola CEO Neville Isdell. The centre has a goal of 400,000 visitors and a top ten position among Ireland’s visitor attractions within three years. Work on the 21 gal-

T

he annual visit by the delegates of the Kimpton Hotel group to Dublin has become a highlight of the summer calendar on the crowded travel social circuit.

Michelin starred restaurant Chapter One was taken over for the event, where Cindy Brewster outlined the hotel chain’s key selling points: where she asked: what other hotel company offers bicycles, has a sommelier called Emily

Spain also ammounted to 21.7 of all expenditure and 20.1pc of all travel. “It is so massive so incredible that so many irish people travel to Spain every year.”

Picture shows The Spanish Tourist Board team, Sara Rivero, Kathryn McDonnell, Inma Bernabeu, Gonzalo Ceballos, Sara Milla and Elma Barreiro ITAA Presidient Martin Skelly paid tribute to the efforts of the Spanish Tourist board in Ireland.

leries is underway in the basement area under the CHQ building and the experience will open in May 2016.

Ruth Andrews of the ITOA is among those inovlved in he project, which will explore all aspects fo the Irish emgrant expeirence and the impact of the diaspora roound the world.

Picture shows Dervla at the location before a briefing meeting with Travel Extra.

Wines who is selecting the wine list throughout the group, some of the best restaurants in the US and the wine hour, probably the most popular event in the Irish market. She also mentioned that Ireland was one of the few markets where different types of buyers could be invited to a single event.

Picture shows Martin Skelly replying on behalf of the Irish travel trade. See more pictures on pages 37 and 38.

C

uba continues to enjoy huge interest in the Irish market, boosted by the imminent arrival of US tourists whose presence is expected to be to the detriment of the island’s traditional hospitality.

Picture shows agents hosted by Air France in Cuba pictured outside La Bodeguita del Medio in Havana, birthplace of the Mojito cocktail, prepared in the bar since its opening in 1942: Mon-

H

as ever Did any trade delegation to Ireland have as much fun on their visit as the 15 delagtes from California tourism ointerests who surfed through Dublin last month?

The US ambassador Kevin O’Malley, hearing they were in town, brought the entire delegation on a private tour of the historic ambassadorial residence in Phoenix Park, built in the same year as the American revolution.

T

he summer 2015 season was not even up and running when Cork staged the first route launch of the 2016 schedule.

Aer Lingus aere to fly twice weekly to Dusseldorf will commence in May 2016 on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Cork Airport Managing Director, Niall MacCarthy said: “Aer Lingus put the challenge to us to prove that there is demand for a new Cork-Düsseldorf

ica Rossi of Abbey Travel, Ian Walsh of Travel Counsellors, Kevin Ryan of Tropical Sky, Barry MacCourt of Trailfinders, Dianne McCarthy of Shandon Travel, Teresa Murphy of Air France KLM, tour guide Marianella, Helen Stokes of Topflight and Paul Harvie of GoHop. They also dined at Restaurant Paladar San Cristobal, one of a new breed of paladars opened in 2010 in Centro Havana.

The visit finished with a performance

by Liam Ó Maonlaí on the Friday and a dinner in Fade Street Social where they were so loud they treated adjoining table to a drink by way of compensation.

California dreaming indeed.

Picture shows Ashlee Ciora of Greater Palm Springs, Francine Sheridan of Visit Los Angeles and Kristin Rust of Mammoth Mountain at the Visit California event at Drury Buildings

route and to show it would be properly supported and marketed both here and in Germany. The collaborative model used to win the new Düsseldorf service for Cork has potential to deliver additional new services for the airport and the region.”

Picture shows Aer Lingus CEO Stephen Kavanagh speaking at the launch, Aer Lingus also serves Munich on a year-round basis.

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SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 9

POSTCARDS FROM THE TRAVEL SCENE

F

áilte Ireland’s awards ceremony under the EDEN programme of the European Union was hosted by the winners, the food producers of Burren Food Trail.

St Hola’s cheese from Inagh featured on what was literally a prize winning menu. Guests paid tribute to the shortlisted West Waterford, Sligo Slow Food Festival and Cong Food Village as well as the winners.

C

unard’s first attempt to host agents on board one of their three Queens earlier this sumemr ended in awry when high winds prvented the tenders boarding Queen Mary in Dun Laoghaire. The second attempt was more successful.

Christine Hannon hosted Irish agents on board Queen Elizabeth in Dubllin port. One of the programmes that sell sout as soon as it is announced is the

E

urope Airpost/ASL Aviation hosted some travel writers on their Dublin to Halifax 737 service to test the theory that day flights leave no jet-lag.

The guests took time to sample some lobster at the Five Fishermen restaurant in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and overnight in the Delta Barrington Hotel before returning to Dublin the following day.

Europe Airpost have 24 seats in pre-

Tina O'Dwyer paid tribute to her team and the concept of sustainable tourism promoted by the awards scheme. “The Burren is a selling point and a barrier. It doesn’t look like a place you find a lot of food. But it is a fertile landscape that inspired waward winning producers and restaurauteurs to settle in the area. We realised there was a huge food story worth telling and that would enable visitors to ineract with the landscape. ”

pets on baord programme. Dogs have their own menu and have their cookies if they have special diets.

“Cunard is about small details and a lot of special touches, the glass of bubbly, the dressing gowns, the slippers, and a great number of trans-Atlantic corssings than our rivals.”

Picture shows agents hosted by Sunway on the Cunard Quen Elizabeth ship visit.

mium economy with some of the best PE food in the sky. Europe Airpost CEO Jean-François Dominiak said may that Europe Airpost are considering extending their 10-rotation season from Dublin to Halifax. Picture shows Willie Dillon photographing Catheirne Grennell Whyte of ATTS Jean-François Dominiak CEO of Europe Airpost with Lorraine Costello and Brian Gallagher of Dublin Airport Authority

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SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 12

ACCOMMODATION SPECIAL

Sourcing places to stay Niyama, Maldives

A

ccommodation-only suppliers to the trade, also known as “bed banks” first emerged in 1999 and hit the headlines over the coming years as they led to an sharp increase number of agents using bed banks rather than selling traditional packages.

The theory was simple, old style package holidays were dead. Agents wanted access to hotels, and in the cacophony of choice they needed someone to wholesale those beds for them.

Traditional bed banks provide their services in three ways, acting as principal, agent or supplier. Some of the main players are;

AGODA is a consumer bank spe-

cialising in securing the lowest discount hotel prices in Asia Pacific.

Based in Singapore with operations in 13 other Asian cities, Agoda’s bed bank network includes 308,000 hotels worldwide..

BEDBANK.NET Among

the original Med specialists in the business, offering 10,000 hotels, villas and apartments worldwide. Popular destinations include USA, Canada, Greece, Cyprus, Mainland Spain, the Canary Islands, Balearics, mainland Portugal, Madeira, Malta, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Bulgaria, Croatia and the Caribbean.

BEDSONLINE

Hotelbeds/Bedsonline offers 75,000 hotels across 180 countries and is in 120 source markets worldwide, selling exclusively to tour operators and wholesalers around the world. They are headed up in Ireland by Thomas McNally and have made great strides in the Irish market, with double-digit growth in roomnight bookings as a source market and destination in 2015 in comparison with the previous year.

This summer season, Irish travellers’ preference for sunny destinations is clearly shown in their top 5 choices: Algarve (Portugal), Lanzarote (Spain), Orlando (Florida), Mallorca and Costa del Sol (Spain). The country also stands out in terms of growth as a destination, with double-digit growth in bookings during the 2015 summer season in comparison to the same period last year. Dublin is by far the most popular destination on the island, followed

by Cork and Galway. Owned by TUI its technology allows agents to maximise revenue through online distribution channels, view all new bookings, amendments, cancellations and rooming lists, query invoicing details, payment status, statement of accounts, payments in advances and deposits or contact them to solve any invoicing related issues. Hotebeds also sells excursions, tickets, transfers and car hire to travel suppliers and distributors across the industry.

BOOKABED BookaBed,

Lee Osborne and Karl Turrell of Bookabed

launched in mid 2005 as a trade only accommodation supplier. Additions this year include a new white label website product which it says will be an exact copy of our own website but rebranded with all the agents logos and

contact details. Lee Osborne said the iframe option is for agents that want to have their own website and populate with their own offers. it will feature a search box on the website which will then drill into the Bookabed system and everything that Bookabed has at the moment including low cost airlines, long haul airlines fares via the GDS, and our filtering systems including the new Tripadvisor filter. It is entirely Irish owned and operated. It has grown and prospered since then under Karl Tyrrell and his team. Karl describes their progress as the result of “getting on with our jobs of trying to sell hotels at great rates and provide a great service to the trade.”

BookaBed launched in mid 2005 as a trade only accommodation supplier. It is entirely Irish owned and operated. It has grown and prospered since then under Karl Tyrrell and his team, led by Lee Osborne and Beverleigh Fly who as General Manager co-ordinates the Irish and International sales teams.

Karl describes their progress as the result of “getting on with our jobs of trying to sell hotels at great rates and provide a great service to the trade.”

BookaBed’s growth rates are phenomenal and continued to develop: ■ Distribution: integrations into the major travel technology companies such as Multicom, Traveltek, Digital Trip, CSI and Dolphin Dynamics. They say this will strengthen distribution into new and existing markets.

■ Product: developing links directly from hotel chains such as IHG, Wyndham, and Marriott further strengthening our content and excellent pricing.

August will see Dynamic Package tool bookable on our new site allowing agents the option to book low cost car-

riers along with accommodation and transfers in the one booking providing a one stop booking system for the travel trade.

Bookabed say their aim is to continue to provide the best possible service, pricing and content to customers. “We are mindful that the business and the support that we have received has been built up on the back of the quality service we provide,” Karl Tyrrell says. “We pride ourselves on being personal, approachable, friendly and helpful and our number one aim is continue this approach while offering the largest choice of accommodation at competitive rates.”

BOOKING.COM The con-

sumer bank established in 1996, part of The Priceline Group, is considered to be Europe’s leading online hotel aggregator based on total room nights sold.

Booking.com offers rates for any type of property, ranging from small independent hotels through to a five star luxury. The site is available in 42 languages and offers 690,000 properties worldwide in 80,000 destinations in 215 countires. IIt features over 50 million reviews written by guests after their stay, and attracts online visitors from both leisure and business markets. The in-house customer service team, which is available 24/7 to assist guests in their native languages

EXPEDIA Expedia says that half of the Irish Travel Agency community have already opted into their Travel Affiliate program.

Expedia TAAP is supported in Ireland

by ATTS Travel Representation Solutions. ATTS provide on the ground local contact for account sales and support to Expedia TAAP enquiries.

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SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 13

ACCOMMODATION SPECIAL The big advantage of Expedia TAAP is the commission for bookings made through the Expedia website. Agents have easy access to rates and inventory available through the huge buying power of the global Expedia brand.

“Reliability, security and price are the main attractions to the program,” says Mirco De Pellegrin who heads up the Expedia TAAP in Europe. “Agents are confident working with Expedia TAAP because they know we are a secure partner plus highly competitive. Commissions are paid automatically on a monthly basis so agents don’t have to invoice or chase unpaid commissions.”

Expedia’s offers 220,000 bookable properties, Air/Land packages, Car Hire and Activities such as Transfers, Tours and Theatre Tickets. Top markets booked through Expedia TAAP include Orlando, Manhattan and London and the program is seeing strong growth in Air/Land packages to Southern Europe.

Directly contracted prepayable hotel rates and Expedia own dynamic-package deals can be tailored by the agent on behalf of its customers at the time of the booking providing great safety to the agency thanks to Expedia acting as the principal for these bookings.

“We have made significant inroads in

Naladhu Maldives the market over the past 18 months,” says De Pellegrin. “Both product and pricing have proven to be very attractive to the Irish Travel Trade and we are in the process of rolling out a new back-end platform which will make reporting and processing of bookings.

GETABED Getabed were es-

tablished 24 years ago and has extremely strong reputation in the north of England, securing 1,000 direct contracts on behalf of clients - set to triple over the course of the next 18 months winning awards and growing to become arguably the largest independ-

ently owned company in the accommodation only sector and claims to be the only truly dedicated trade only accommodation only supplier brand in Ireland with no customer facing websites at all.

Getabed say that their strength is their partnership approach in the markets they operate in. They work closely with agents, alongside their in-house contracts team who achieve unique pricing on key products benefitting the agent and their customers. Big sellers in the Irish marketinclude the Algarve, Lanzarote, Costa del Sol, London, New York and the Spanish Islands. In New

York, Getabed say they up to 23pc cheaper than Irish competitors, up to 11pc cheaper in London, and up to 30pc cheaper in Majorca.

John McKibbin, Sales Manager for Ireland said he is delighted with the support he has received from the trade to date. “We work hard to create partnerships with our agents. We’ve had so many positive comments from agents about our customer service, and quality of product.” Getabed offer a freephone number (1800 939 130), no cancellation policy – it is only passed on to the agent/customer if the hotel has a cancellation policy in place – and breadth

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THOUSANDS OF CITIES AND LONG-HAUL DESTINATIONS WORLDWIDE CANCUN FROM € 10 pppn DUBAI FROM € 16 pppn LAS VEGAS FROM € 14 pppn NYC FROM € 40 pppn

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MARKET LEADING PROVIDER FOR ALGARVE NO.1 SELLING BEACH DESTINATION

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ACCOMMODATION SPECIAL

of product including their popular Director’s Choice properties and their easy to use and fast searching website.

They work closely with agents, alongside their in-house contracts team and further coupled with excellent supplier relationships, which results in being able to secure the best rates and products to match customer’s requirements, which often leads to unique pricing on key products benefitting the agent and their customers.

Being 100pc trade only, there is no direct to consumer website to distract their focus, it remains purely on the travel agent, creating constant dialogue to understand and more importantly aid the agent’s needs.

GLOBE HOTELS Trade

only operation which are preferred suppliers to Travelsavers Ireland and one of three accommodation suppliers to Travel Centres. Founded in 2004, they have three exclusive suppliers, and future contracts are being signed only on an exclusivity basis. They will launch a new Globe site later this year which will include added functionality and a faster to book process. We will offer more exclusive partners online via the globehotels.ie website than ever before with unique deals especially in the Middle East and Asia.. “I know the Irish agents and what they need,” Jeff Collins says. Many agents already have TARSC back office systems which integrate with Globe..

GROUPLEADER Bob

Haugh’s new venture is designed for anyone who wants to buy groups. The system invited hotels to bid for group business.

GTA Part of Kuoni Group, GTA

provides accommodation and ground travel products including hotels, transfers, sightseeing tours, attractions, restaurants, shows and experiences from over 45,000 supplier partners worldwide. Powering global travel through its XML connectivity and booking sites, GTA processes over 21,000 bookings every day, selling almost 14 million room nights a year in 30 languages online and connecting clients in 190 countries. Connect now with GTA at www.gta-travel.com

HOLIDAY BROKERS part of On Holiday Group based in

Thomas McNally of Bedsonline

Beach hotels can turn up on several different bed banks at different rates England, is the trade only bed bank from the English based On Holiday Group and has been trading since 2004, offering beach, city and ski properties but with a particular focus on Mediterranean beach resorts and growing to become Britain’s largest independent bed bank, carrying in excess of 650,000 passengers per year. Euro Rooms Direct provide an impressive range of accommodation options in EU destinations, as well as great service and incredible prices.

They have been voted best accommodation only supplier 5 times by travel agents at England’s TTG awards, British Travel Awards and Travel Bulletin awards, as well as coming 16th in the Sunday Times Virgin fast track 100 companies Holiday Brokers & Euro Rooms have an impressive hotel portfolio across all major destinations, from short haul to long haul as well as cities, ski, villas and more.

They have 50,000 hotels within the site and provide taxi and shuttle transfers in association with Holiday Taxis as well as offering a 24 hour emergency duty office. All bookings are live availability and bookable via the websites, direct connection XML or call sales support for more assistance and advice.

Brendan Mallon launched the brand in Ireland last year. OnHoliday.ie say they have enjoyed a fantastic introduction to the Irish market place, with incredible support from travel agents throughout the island. Booking websites and brands are 100pc trade only. OnHoliday.ie work with bedbanks Holiday Brokers & Euro Rooms Direct.

Holiday Brokers. They say that price, product and service, along with a close

relationships with the trade will allow them to continue our current rate of growth within the market place on both sides of the border.

HOTELOPIA Part of TUI

Travel PLC empire (the world’s largest vertically integrated travel company), Hotelopia is a leading European hotel aggregator, offering discounted accommodations to both the business and leisure traveller at 40,000 hotels, in 2,800 destinations. They are also in the reviews business and now have 220,000 reviews on 50,000 hotels and apartments.

HOTELS.COM Probably

the largest and most widely recognised hotel aggregator in the world, The database of more than 70,000 properties worldwide includes bed-and-breakfasts, condos and all-inclusive resorts.

Features of their travel affiliate program is an option for affiliates to cobrand their site, enabling them to “build on the trust and recognition consumers have for the Interactive Affiliate Network name (IAN also includes expedia, hotwire, tripadvisor, and a number of other leading online travel sites) while retaining the look and feel of your own site.” The consumer brand offers reviews about many of the properties listed, destination guides that provide a wide variety of dining, shopping, sightseeing, nightlife, and cultural information for 220 cities, and website functionally like multiple language and currency options for better conversions, and 24/7 Call Center Support for ‘Special Internet Rates’.

HOTELS4U -subsidiary of the Thomas Cook Group (Panorama, Sunworld etc), the first travel company in

the world, Hotels4U is another bed bank that offers a wide array of hotel and apartment properties around the world (200,000 properties concentrated in Spain, The Canaries, Algarve, Turkey & Egypt as well as a wide range of city break hotels worldwide.hotels world-wide)..

HRS German based corporate specialist which offers negotiated rates to corporate buyers with the flexibility to allow company employees to search for and book their own hotel rooms.

Their recent survey of Irish corporate buyers was the most extensive ever compiled by an accommodation supplier on business buyers.

INNSTANT TRAVEL

Darryl Ismail’s Innstant Travel’s advantage is higher commissions, 20pc in many cases, and exclusive deals with key hotel groups and early online booking discounts. The Innstant Group is comprised of two main divisions: Wholesale and Technology. The 2 divisions offer travel agencies, tour operators, travel consortia and online travel companies with multiple solutions to successfully compete in today’s competitive online global arena.

Travel Counsellor Fidelma Brady with John McKibbin of Getabed

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ACCOMMODATION SPECIAL The wholesale division, product profile includes over 275,000 unique hotels, apartments and vacation homes, more than 45,000 tours and attractions, 20,000 plus sports, show and concert tickets, 18,000 transfers and in excess of 15,000 car hire locations in 198 countries – all with live availability.

Innstant Connect, the technology division, powers fully hosted online platform solutions for the travel industry.

The company has recently launched a full blown and innovative Dynamic Package tool with full B2B, B2C, B2S and B2E capability. The company also creates mobile websites; offers push and pull XMLs as well as customized white-label solutions.

Key product solutions include hotels, transfers, car hire, tickets, tours, attractions, flights (all 4 GDS and LCC’s) booking engines and channel managers.

LOW COST BEDS are Part of

Lowcost Travel Group, launched by Paul Evans in England in 2004.

Evans was familiar with the Irish market and appointed Clem Walshe to head up the Irish operation.

Clem says; “2e have worked hard over the last number of years to establish ourselves as a key trading partner with Irish travel agents.

We have recently increased our cities and long haul portfolio which will further improve our worldwide property offering and we’re currently developing some excellent XML relationships with a number of Irish agents.

We pride ourselves on being competitive and want to win market share, but only if it makes commercial sense. The key to our global growth over the last 10 years has been the successful manner

erties, of which about 5,000 are directly contracted Mediterranean and worldwide beach properties..

SUPERBREAK .com, England hotel bed bank specialist. A subsidiary of Holidaybreak PLC, a leading UK tour operator, Superbreak currently offers 1700 hotels spread across some 400 British cities and towns. Additionally they are growing their overseas offering, currently at 3,500 hotels.

TRAVELCUBE Hotel Bellechasse Paris we’ve re-invested company resource in our brand.

Lowcostbeds has become one of the leading independently owned bed banks in the world and now deal with over 36,000 travel agency partners in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australasia and is on course to double the amount of contracted hotels available to its customers over the coming months.

Our industry leading technology provides agents with access to highly competitive rates and availability from over 200,000 hotels.

Irish Travel Agents are being offered 15pc commission on all accommodation bookings and 20 pc commission on all resorthoppa transfers when booked in conjunction with a lowcostbeds accommodation booking.

There are hundreds of trade exclusive early booking discounts, free nights, free kids places & great special offers and state of the art XML feeds available (nett or gross) Lowcostbeds directly contracted stock provides travel agents with exclusive access to unbeatable rates across a wide range of key properties in popular destina-

tions. Attractive commercials and an experienced local team have also contributed to the success the brand has enjoyed in the Irish market.

Sales are up 42pc year on year on the holidays side of things.

One of the key strengths we have is our flexibility, our price and our range of product. They really are the three boxes that people want to tick when they are going away on holidays.

Whether it is on the beds brand or the holiday brand we are enjoying quite a lot of success there.”

The group also runs consumer TV advertisements in Ireland and Clem turns up occasionally on shopping TV.

TRANSHOTEL

Spanish Grupo Transhotel consists of six companies related to the tourism sector, offering its portfolio of more than 60,000 hotels and all types of services throughout the world for 78,800 travel agencies worldwide.

MED HOTELS

Med Hotels: In England this is Thomas Cook’s trade bed bank while Hotels4u is the consumer accommodation brand.

Focusing on the massmarket, volume end of

the sector it says its Thomas Cook-ownership enhances its buying power and gives it access to exclusive deals.

The trade brand has in excess of 118,000 prop-

The GTA online booking site offers excursions, attraction tickets and accommodation including 6,300 properties in 74 beach resorts and coastal destinations. They have added 400 new sightseeing tours and attractions for 2015. They say a multi-million euro investment in technology

helps process thousands of bookings daily.

VENERE Another

online leader in the European hotel bed bank sector, Italy-based and Expedia owned venere.com offers 100,000 lodging properties ranging from 1 to 5 star luxury hotels.

YOUTRAVEL

English based but operates in Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Russia, Sweden and France, and made tentative efforts to break in to the Irish market in Paul Richies’ time there before he moved to Lowcost. Its main focus is the Mediterranean, with a slight bias towards Greece and offers 4000 hotels. It sells via agents as well as direct to consumers. Youtravel offers agents a standard commission of 15pc.

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ACCOMMODATION SPECIAL

B

ed banks have evolved dramatically over the past 16 months, never mind the 16 years since they first emerged on the travel trade landscape.

Pat Dawson, CEO of the ITAA says dynamic packaging now represents in the region of 70pc of most travel agent’s sales and that gfigure is grwoing, not declining.

Travel agents have had a bewildering range of choices. There are at least nine major players in the Irish market playing for the business of agents and even more in the B2C market, with more than 100 bed banks fighting for the leftovers.

So what will differentiate one bed bank from another? One trend is that bedbanks are focussing less on the size of the portfolio and more on curated properties.

There is a scrap for the key markets beloved of Irish holiday markers, some of them unique to Ireland as opposed to other tourism markets.

Two major players have come to cominate the market with the rest coming in behind.

C

lem Walshe of Lowcost Beds says that the big growth areas over the last few months have been in the city break and long haul markets as his product develops in those areas.

“Our city break market is up 237pc year on year and long haul up 131pc with beach steadily growing at over 22pc year on year.

Obvious short haul beach still has the big

Pillow talk

Hotel du Petit Moulin, Paris: Cities have seen much of the growth in the Irish bedbank business over the past twelve months numbers obviously but as aviation access and hotel rates improve the other areas (city and long haul) are where we're seeing the big growth and with good margins for all involved.”

He says technology is still key. “We've embarked on a number of bigdevelopments to enhance the site and address issues raised by agents to help improve all round efficiency and user experience with more to come over the Autumn / Winter period when the site is less busy.”

“Price as always at the forefront of everyone's mind. It's still a very 'price sensitive market'.Agents are looking for a supplier that can provide them with a great range of product to what we call 'key routes' where

Paul Riches, Clem Walshe, Grainne Caffrey, and Alex Gisbert of Lowcostbeds

Irish consumer demand is high. Think of where Ryanair and Aer Lingus have the capacity - that's they key.”

He says Lowcostbeds has expanded their offerings on many properties where we have exclusivity and have recruited more dedicated trade support staff “to ensure we continue to improve our levels of service in all markets.”

“We offer really keen commercials.

Agents have never been so aware of their margin and overall bottom line. Lowcost have a tempting suite of attractive trade commercials including basic commissions of 15 – 20pc, target driven over ride commissions, sales staff incentives, as well as trade competitions.

“Out technology is fast, reliable and very easy to use. More and more agents are signing up to our XML integrated feeds giving them access to a huge range of great value accommodation and provide the ability to grow their dynamic package business.

We offer on-going trade newsletters with product updates, special

offers, competitions as well as attractive trade commercials ensure both agency staff and management like working with us in a mutually beneficial environment.

We have spent a bit of time investing in Ireland.

A lot of consumers and agents are now seeing Lowcost brand as a place to go for breaks in Ireland. Dublin, Cork, Galway, Belfast regularly feature in our top sellers of the week of trading, which is great.

L

owcostbeds were the first bed bank that offered the Irish Travel Agents an indemnity against any claims.

High profile failures such as 1800hotels, Chase and Onholiday Group, all of which had a substantial presence in the Irish market, raised alarm bells among agents and got some unwelcome bad publicity on Irish radio talk shows.

Lowcostbeds led the charge to calm the frayed nervesof the trade with their indemnity agreement with the ITAA. “We have struck an important agreement with

the ITAA,” Clem Walshe says. “It is in place now for over a year with an indemnity for travel agents.

With the increase in dynamic packaging there is a lot of risk out there for agents if they are dealing with hotel groups or certain suppliers who maybe won’t indemnify the agents against a whole range of risks that they may have,” “Pat Dawson and I had a chat about this and we spoke to the powers that be in Spain and we are delighted to be able to say that we now indemnify every Irish travel agent for anything they book on Lowcostbeds so they are protected.

Clem Walshe says there are no VAT implications with Lowcostbeds as they are registered in Switzerland.

“Agents are all looking for ways to cut costs. A faster system saves money. And we maintain a telephone contact. In the rush to faster and faster systems people under estimate the power of the telephone.”

“We can also get instant hotel pricing comparisons on extranet, if the prices are too high we

get on to them and they change it instantly.”

“Google say if you are not loading in 4 seconds you are losing 40pc of your business. When booking a holiday people look at 12 websites. This rises to 20 in a recession.

That is why speed matters. That is why the functionality of the site maters, your reputation, ease of use, and word of mouth are totally crucial.

J

eff Collins and his father stared Globe Hotels, an exclusively Irish bed bank in 2004, and four years later were integrated into Vertical by Peter Heaney, meaning that Globe acquired the technological clout to compete with the big international players. “ In the current environment agents are going more loyal, sticking with the guys they know,” he says. “The bigger players are only number crunchers. We offer 24 hours emergency back-up if there are any problems.”

“I know every manager, every owner, I know all their staff. We are at the end of the phone to help people. In one case I ended up giving someone

travel extra new page 19 10/08/2015 12:16 Page 1

SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 19

ACCOMMODATION SPECIAL New additions to the website included Trip Advisor reviews, attraction tickets and cancellation charges on top of last year’s additions such as scheduled airlines, low deposit long haul flight and hotel packages.

"Being a trade only supplier and seeing such large increases in sales really is fantastic" said Sales Manager Lee Osborne, "we completely rely on the trade for business and would like to thank all agents for their continued support. It has been a great year so far and it is all down to the travel agent." “We are mindful that the business and the support that we have received has been built up on the back of the quality service we provide,� Karl Tyrrell says. “We pride ourselves on being personal, approachabl

Huvafen Fushi, Maldives ended up giving someone directions to a hotel in Paris.� “The main thing Globe Hotels offers is exclusive rates to trade. We won’t be offering the same hotels to the consumer. Our new suppliers are being accepted only on an exclusive basis. Our product won’t be showing up anywhere else.� “We have our own directly contracted hotels, the hotels that specialise in the Irish market .� “We have three suppliers who are exclusive the company, dealing only with Globe. In addition we can offer 140,000 properties from 17 suppli-

John McKibbin of Getabed

ers offering the most niche destination at the end of an instant search.

If you want a hotel in Angola, you got it.�

I

nitially it was independent providers who have grown quickest in this segment.

With about 70 bed-banks are already active in European holiday destinations, destination-based bed-banks began to take over traditional tour operator functions such as bundling procurement volume and capacity management.

Perhaps inevitably the big tour operators responded with bed banks of their own. TUI, Thomas Cook, Rewe and FTI began to build bedbanks of their own with varying degrees of success. These were dedicated to supplying hotel capacity to tour operators and travel agents in order to compete with the independent providers.

For hoteliers, new providers offer an opportunity to diversify their distribution channels, reduce dependence on large

clients and win additional business.

Tour operator head offices were moving away from procurement and production and towards product designers and marketers as a result. o prove big is not necessarily better, an Irish bedbank entered the field and began to win the loyalty of agents.

Oldcastle based BookaBed, has been the winner of the accommodation supplier category at the Irish Travel Industry awards every year since for 2010.

The company was launched by Karl Tyrrell and Jackie Clynch in mid 2005 as a trade only accommodation supplier.

It is entirely Irish owned and operated. It has grown and prospered since then under Karl Tyrrell and his team, led

by Lee Osborne and Beverleigh Fly .

There were successful launches of the site in the north, Britain, and Australia with sites now live for Canada, German and the USA.

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ACCOMMODATION SPECIAL

Velassaru in the Maldives: Bedbanks started in beach destinations but quickly expanded throughout the industry our number one aim is continue this approach while offering the largest choice of accommodation at competitive rates.”

Karl describes their progress as the result of “getting on with our jobs of trying to sell hotels at great rates and provide a great service to the trade.

Our strength is our company values, we have a great team who put a lot of focus on customer service, we are honest and agents can trust that we will do our best for them and although we have grown a lot over the years my aim is to keep

the small company touch when dealing with our loyal customers.”

"We are continually trying to improve how we work and we invest a lot in technology to make sure we have the best system possible.”

Bookabed also reorganised their call centre and launched their online group booking engine in the last year. This booking technology allows access to 1,000,000 global group coordinators and to their 40,000 hotel supplier partners speeding up the hotel bidding process for discounted group

rates. This system continues to improve its offerings to increase the efficiencies of travel agents. Groups can take time to obtain rate proposals. However, the ability to co-ordinate directly with the hotel for any other requirements such as meeting rooms, dining options and local attraction prices.

■ Distribution: integrations into the major travel technology companies such as Multicom, Traveltek, Digital Trip, CSI and Dolphin Dynamics. They say this will strengthen distribu-

SCREEN GRAB: A 30 SECOND HISTORY OF TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY 1959 American Airlines set up first computer network with travel agency terminals (Sabre – the Semi-Automatic Business Research Environment), completed 1964.

1963 Trans-Canada Airlines bookings computerised.

1968 Delta Air Lines launched the Delta Automated Travel Account System 1971 Trans World Airlines set up the Programmed Airline Reservation System 1971 Apollo system launched by United Airlines, the system that would eventually become known as Galileo.

1976 Travicom the first multi-access central reservations system, founded

by BA and British Caledonian, based on Apollo & eventually to become part of Galileo.

1987 Galileo formed by nine European carriers, British Airways, KLM

Royal Dutch Airlines, Alitalia, Swissair, Austrian Airlines, Olympic, Sabena, Air Portugal and Aer Lingus.

1987 Amadeus founded by a consortium led by Air France and Lufthansa 1990 Worldspan founded by Delta, Northwest Airlines, and Trans World Airlines.

1992 Galileo merges with Apollo system (United Airlines).

1996 Ryanair takes inventory offline.

2002 Aer Lingus takes inventory offline.

2001 Travel Distribution Services acquires Galileo 2006 Travelport formed agrees to merge Galileo with Worldspan 2010 Aer Lingus bring inventory back online.

2013 Ryanair brings inventory back online, initially with Travelport then with Amadeus and Sabre.

2015 Lufthansa announces GDS fee.

tion into new and existing markets.

■ Product: developing links directly from hotel chains such as IHG, Wyndham, and Marriott further strengthening our content and pricing.

August will see Dynamic Package tool bookable on our new site allowing agents the option to book low cost carriers along with accommodation and transfers in the one booking providing a one stop booking system for the travel trade.

Their most recent update to their site included.

Bookabed have added 10 new staff in the past 14 months, seven of based in Ireland, two in England and one in Australia.

They are currently on the look out for partners in various countries around the world. Plans for this year include a white label version of Bookabed to be made available to agents as well as launches into other markets worldwide.

says Paul Evans. "As agents move from traditional o dynamic packaging we want them to come to us. If anything arises we will look at our systems and ask if there is anything we can do. We can give them website they can price themselves.

“Our quality control is completely ruthless. And

there is no point in Lowcostbeds being high cost beds.”

“Tour operators have to move on from the sangria welcome meeting, the 12 stops on the bus before you reach your hotel, not getting the tickets until two weeks before, the wallet, all of those things,“ “I am a big believer in

A

gents are still important to hotels and distribtors, more important than many in the trade are preapred to acknowledge. o matter how big the direct business gets, the trade continues to grow,

Hotel San Regis, Paris - view from Deluxe Junior suite

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ACCOMMODATION SPECIAL putting the customer in control. It is essential for us all to get the product right. Your reputation is fundamental to repeat business and margin. All the reviews will be stay on the review centre, your ratings, your reputation management, it comes down to the answer to the question: did I have a good holiday?”

“You can’t afford to let the answer to that question impact on your reputation or indeed to have any issues at all. That is why it is important not to exaggerate, to tell it how it is, the margins are not high enough to have problems.”

Paul Evans’maintains that “you get your margin from your own product, you get the range from other people.” It is available in eight languages and ten countries. Some of his rivals, Evans say,

Kimpton Grand Hotel, Minneapolis know nothing about product and are basically just distributors.

He says the difference between Lowcostbeds and other bed banks is that they started out life as a direct loading system rather than a reservations system. “Some of our opponents are selling pack-

ages dynamically rather than genuine dynamic packages.”

“The others started as reservations systems and tried to develop the back end. Our system presents the product first and then you input the transfer or flight.”

A

s with all aspects of the industry, one country dominates the market.

Spanish destinations still represent about 35pc of everything sold through bedbanks in Ireland.

Clem Walshe says “When we launched Lowcost in Ireland five

years ago, I could safely say 95pc of all our sales would have been to Spain and the Algarve. Now there is a change in that.

More recently, companies have expanded their product ranges to include long-haul and city destinations in an attempt to improve margin.

It is very competitive business and analysts say there is still room for consolidation which will lead to further maturing, and then margins will creep up.

The market continues to be dominated by late bookings. Lowcostbeds sales director Paul Evans reports more than 60pc of bookings are for travel within six weeks. If you snooze you lose never had such meaning.

“We are particularly strong in the Caribbean, Florida, the Americas, Thailand, Dubai, as these investments pay off. Citybreaks are growing very strongly, doing very very well.”

“There is a seismic shift coming. It is growing all the time The numbers are still quite small on long haul but it si growing.”

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TECHNOLOGY

T

Travelport wants fewer clicks

ravelport launched a round of funding for travel tech start-ups based in Ireland as part of their Incubation programme.

Winning applicants will relocate to the Incubator labs in Denver, Colorado, where a panel of experts will help them develop their ideas into marketready products, build up a user base and prepare them for investor pitches.

They will also have access to Travelport’s APIs, software development kits and data providers and Travelport customers – including airlines, hotels and car hire companies – will provide feedback.

The latest version of Travelport’s Smartpoint point of sale product is now available to download on the Travelport desktop app and on the web version.

Smartpoint 6.0 promises less clicks for more product information to help agents tailor options for their customers and let them know what ancillary products are available at further

S

Dave Conlon, Sinead Reilly, Joanne Madde and Tara Hynes of the Travelport team. stages in the booking process.

It will help travel consultants advise their customers about the entire range of products, optional services and offers from airlines with interactive screen displays and real time booking.

Agents can also book and pay for low cost carriers using debit and cards within the same booking workflow.

The Ingresso Entertainment

Tickets plug-in can be accessed on this version Smartpoint.

Agents can use it to earn extra commission by adding theatre, attraction and sightseeing products to bookings, which are searchable by airport code and general terms.

Agents can set their own pricing and commission levels without having to invoice, and they will receive immediate

confirmation by email.

Details of the tickets bought are integrated into passenger name records and back-office systems.

The development is part of Travelport’s wider strategy to provide better content through its point of sales tools. There are now 800 developers working within their Travel Commerce Platform, create apps and potential revenue opportunities for agents.

Travelport acquired Dublinbased mobile app developer Mobile Travel Technologies.

They creates apps and services tailored for smartphones, tablets and other devices like the Apple Watch. Their clients include easyJet, Singapore Airlines, Saudio and BCD Travel.

There are now 110 airlines signed up to Travelport’s Rich Content and Branding function, the latest being Lufthansa, Hahn Air, SWISS Airlines and Peruvian Airlines. Seventy airlines are live on the service, which enables airlines to market their products, display all

their fares and ancillaries.

Travelport signed a partnership agreement with the travel management company, Radius Travel, which has 70 member agencies spread across 80 countries including Cox & Kinds, Ctrip and Portman Travel.

The agreement will see Travelport and Radius working together to accelerate sales growth in the corporate travel market.

Radius members will have access to Smartpoint, Rich Content and Branding, eNett Virtual Account Numbers and Universal API, and they will be able to use the Travelport Booking Feed to help with budgeting and vendor negotiations.

Travelport’s hotel content offers 650 hotel properties in addition to Radius’ global hotel programme, which offers access to rates at 39,000 properties in 135 countries.

Travelport has a presence in 170 countries, and employees 3,500 people.

Sabre’s single desktop

abre’s $411m acquisition of Abacus International, a global distribution system in Asia Pacific is the latest step forward by a gorup that has a larger presence in the USA than in Ireland.

In Europe Amadeus has low teens market share. Iin the US it has a majority share, in the Middle East it has share in the high twenties..

Abacus International’s two dozen key markets has its own national marketing company, where, typically, the national airline is the majority shareholder. Abacus’s share in each NMC is usually less than 10%.

The GDS is represented by Sean O’Kelly in Ireland.

Sabre CEO Tom Klein recently told investors Sabre has been seeing accelerating growth month after month in 2015. “We’re the only GDS that has a single global desktop that

Kristian Rocher and Sean O'Kelly of Sabre we upgrade across all of our customers, Sabre Red — our a SaaS product, with localizations. We go to market in an efficient way. “ “There is a virtuous cycle of value where the GDS connects airlines to their highest-yielding customers.”

“Those are generally corporate buyers, as well as travelers who want choice in selection or service model or post-booking services.”

“To get to those customers, the airlines have to provide content to the GDSs, so that an agency can best position the

airline’s product. “ “That means giving the agents full content — which gives buyers confidence and creates more of a frictionless marketplace. It means giving agencies the tools they need to service the largest, most complex corporations they need to

purchase travel.”

“For the largest corporations, airline spend alone could approach $1bn a year.

“As a procurement category, this is managed like any other supply chain you have in a corporation for purchasing. That process is built around technologies like ours.”

“We’re very deep into that corporate buying process. We think we’re the best. But as an industry, that procurement process is wrapped around the services that GDSs like us provide. “ “And it goes beyond “clickto-buy,” which is a very small part of the services we provide for agencies, airlines or corporations. For consumers, they want transparency, choice, and services that airlines today aren’t in a position to provide for them.”

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TECHNOLOGY

Amadeus re-price options

B

ig developments for Amadeus in the past twelve months include Ryanair joining their GDS, Amadeus Ticket Changer Refund, Amadeus Ticket Change Involuntary and acquiring Navitaire.

Amadeus recently launched their Insight product suite, designed to help agencies use data available on the Amadeus Travel Intelligence Engine.

The suite launched on two modules, Search Analysis and Booking Analysis.

Amadeus acquired Accenture subsidiary, Navitaire for $830m.

It will be sold separately to their Altéa suite, which has largely been used for full-service carriers.

New functions to the Amadeus Ticket Changer allow agents to manage re-pricing, reissuing and refunding requests

A

Trish O’Leary, Volker Lorenz and Olwen McKinney the Amadeus team in Ireland and automatically calculate refunds.

The Involuntary Ticket Changer option will be useful in cases of travel disruption and schedule changes because it allows agents to reissue tickets in one automated transaction.

A report commissioned by Amadeus predicts that by the end of the customers will be categorized in six different customer profiles segments will emerge by the end of the next decade.

Simplicity Searchers will opt

for bundled offers. They don’t want to have to manage too much of their holiday themselves – they want to pamper themselves with the assurance of their safety.

Obligation Meeters will have a specific reason to travel and will have budget and time constraints – they will look for an algorithm based technology for a hassle-free booking.

Social Capital Seekers will rely almost completely on peer reviews and recommendations to validate their decisions,

while Cultural Purists will use their holiday time to immerse themselves into an alien culture.

Ethical Travellers is pretty self-explanatory – they will make travel plans based on moral grounds like decreasing their carbon footprint or helping others. They will seek volunteering, community development and eco-friendly activities on their holidays. On the other end of the scale, Reward Hunters are looking for to pamper themselves with highend experiences.

Ryanair fares and ancillaries, including Business Plus, are available on Amadeus’ light ticketing technology designed for low fare carriers.

Fare Choice is Amadeus’ signature product. It allows agencies to quickly browse low fare flights on a single display and saves customers fro the hassle

of shopping around for deals.

One of the most attractive features of Fare Choice is that only bookable fares are presented to customers, so agents don’t end up quoting fares that are no longer available.

Other products in the Amadeus suite include Agency Manager, which offers a revenue management tool for fee collection; Selling Platform, a retail app that is used to increase sales with single access to fares and other content; and All Fares, which gives agents access to aggregated fare content – all fares, including 40 non-Amadeus airlines, can be browsed and booked on one display.

The Amadeus Group employs 10,000 people. Their customers include travel providers, sellers and buyers.

Aer Lingus go it alone

decision on a revamp of Aer LIngus in house booking system Astral is imminent.

While revealing that the current system is not running on its own for some time because is so old, Aer Lingus have never been in a standard client supplier relationship with one of the major GDS’s and the airline has always claimed that this gave it added indpendence.

Last year an Aer Lingus executive said “we want to play a lead role in replacing our current inhouse PSS with a more enhanced version currently not on offer from traditional providers. We have worked on very sophisticated business cases.”

“The added value we can create from the additional revenue makes the business case for the airlines.”

Mike Rutter and Ciaran Mulligan announcing the latest Aer LIngus trade partnership with Blue Insurance “The cost is not significant. If you see the distributions costs in today's world, you go through the entire value chain the travel agency, via the GDS, and everybody who is involved, I believe the cheapest solution for the customer and the cheapest solution for the airline it's providers on the online base in cutting out those things.

A

er Lingus has been using middleware from Datalex which enables it

to communicate within the PSS inventory and the online booking engine.

“It complicated but it serves the purpose very well.”

“We will keep on investing in this technology. It is not so simple like to buy a machine like a hi fi for your living room. It needs to communicate with departure control system and the online booking engine. If you consider the landscape of interfaces we have to programme it is not easy to understand by someone

who is not familiar with that technology.”

“We believe it is worth making the necessary investment from the airline side to comply with the new standard the communication between the PPS inventory and the booking system.

The airline says the revamp will be concluded in three years from now.

“So far, going into the NDC area, is still a huge potential for improvement from an efficiency point of view for the entire industry.

“We are in large parts compliant already with what NDC envisages because our customers want it. We don't see it at the pain we are glad.

“The contents we can offer on the Internet for example legroom, all comes naturally in the booking flow. We know that from modern retail providers like Amazon, we must go that way.

“It is a consumer friendly solution, such are the fees due to buy an airline tickets, plus the added value products, from a customer and from a producer's perspective and the lowest as opposed to what have we have today.

A

er Lingus intends offering an entirely new product. “We had negotiated with our potential provider that other airlines be supplied. Since we have been very suc-

cessful in the past, and we cooperate with a lot of small airlines, notably a Aer Arann for a regional product, it will prove attractive for small airlines, At one stage 20 airlines worldwide were customers of Aer Lingus for PSS services.”

“I believe there are still barriers of entry even though we can we can fight them but it may be very useful for small airlines to team up with us.”

“We had customers in all business models in the past, not only legacy carriers, customers in Russia customers in Africa, customers in the charter sector, so we had a variety of clients.”

We have that experience. We are proud of that we have and we would like to carry that into the future.

We will head into the next decade with this technology.”

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THE FLYING COLUMN

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare

SINGLE SKY

The European Commission granted €329m in co-funding to Air Traffic Management projects around Europe to improve infrastructure and accelerate the move to single European sky.

SOUTHWEST, United and American Airlines all reported their largest ever quarterly profits even though Southwest's revenue grew just 2pc while United's declined 5.6pc and American’s 2pc, giving each of the airlines an opportunity to buy back stock a popular strategy to make the remaining shares more valuable, American is spending $2bn on buybacks, Southwest $1.5bn, and Delta $5bn, Collusionalert US Federal authorities worry 80pc of seats are now sold by four airlines, Delta, Southwest, United and American. There is little evidence of cheaper fuel prices being passed on to customers although Southwest said its average one-way fare for the first part of summer was down 3pc from last summer.

RYANAIR banned passengers from

bringing alcohol on to flights from England to Ibiza in an effort to stamp out drink-related problems on board. Alcohol was banned on flights from Scotland to Ibiza in April. Ralph Anker’s anna.aero speculated that Ryanair will use its Amsterdam slots in the coming winter to Stansted, Paris Beauvais and Barcelona, each twice daily and to Frankfurt Hahn.

FLYBE chief commercial officer Paul

Simmons will leave the company in mid-January 2016 to take up a role with Christoph Mueller in Malaysia Airlines.

BOEING’s 2015 pilot and technician

outlook predicts that commercial airlines will need to recruit half a million new pilots over the next 20 years to keep up with demand.

AMSTERDAM

Ralph Anker’s anna.aero speculated that Ryanair will use its Amsterdam slots in the coming winter to Stansted, Paris Beauvais and Barcelona, each twice daily and to Frankfurt Hahn.

FAREWELL The last US Airways flight will take off on October 17.

AIRBUS is reportedly preparing to

launch an A450-900LR for long range flights.

They are in talks with Singapore Airlines for an ultra-long haul jet.

DELTAcancelled an order for 40 Boeing 737-900s and 20 Embraer E-190s after pilots voted down a three-year contract.

UNITED Airlines awarded two hackers

with 1m free flight miles for spotting security glitches in its website.

AIR MALTA launched a free in-flight spa experience.

CIUDAD REAL airport was sold at

auction for €10,000 — 100,000 times less than it cost to build.

JAVA Grace O’Shaughnessy’s Java Re-

public won the contract to supply coffee onboard Aer Lingus short haul flights.

MALAYSIA will

rebrand on Sept 1.

A here’s eye view of the A350 at Dublin airport

The A350 option Aercap and Aer Lingus showcase A350 choice

A

engus Kelly’s AerCap brought an A350 to Dublin last month to mark the transfer of the majority of AerCap’s activities from Los Angeles to Dublin.

Amsterdam-based AerCap are now the largest owner of aircraft in the world and have 122 A350’s on order.

AerCap – including International Lease Finance Corporation, which it acquired in 2014 – is Airbus’ largest customer, having placed firm orders for more than 900 total jetliners (worth over $US 1.2 trillion at catalogue prices) from Airbus’ marketleading commercial aircraft product line. In addition to the 20 A350 XWB

jetliners it has on firm order, AerCap is the company’s top customer for the single-aisle A320 Family with 751 aircraft booked, and the widebody A330 product line (129 ordered).

Stephen Kavanagh said that the economics of the aircraft and the standard of luxury in the cabins had attracted Aer Lingus to the aircraft, but gave no indication of whether the eight additional aircraft due under the IAG takeover proposals would be additional A350 orders or lease-ins.

Aer Lingus currently has nine A350s on order to replace the A330 fleet, with three each arriving in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Chris Buckley of Airbus said AerCap was Airbus’s largest customer.

The manufacturers have 781 orders by 40 different airlines and it was “hugely frustrating” do not have aircraft to sell until 2021.

Five are currently in service. Aengus Kelly talked about the virtues of the Irish aviation industry, while Ministers Richard Bruton and Paschal Donohoe paid tribute to AerCap and the aviation leasing industry and AerCap’s growth.

The guests were brought on an hour long flight around the island.

AER LINGUS TRIES EUROBUSINESS

A

er Space, the Aer Lingus premium economy service, will be introduced on short haul routes this autumn, with an empty middle seat, lounge access, free snacks/ and drinks, baggage allowance and priority boarding, what it calls a EuroBusiness-style premium class.

Aer Lingus will match Ryanair’s business plus pricing but there will be no class divider which would trigger higher taxes from airports where the West-

minster government’s APD applies.

Under the 'EuroBusiness' model a standard economy class seating is marketed with add-on benefits designed to appeal to corporate flyers jetting between Dublin and cities such as London, Paris and Amsterdam.

The first three rows of the economy-only aircraft serving those and other key cities will be set aside for Aer Space bookings, where passengers will find the middle of three seats is

kept empty.

Other Aer Space perks will include lounge access, priority boarding and baggage, and free inflight meals.

Aer Space fares will be fully flexible, with no change fee and a full refund available.

Aer Lingus ran focus groups involving top-tier members of its Gold Circle frequent flyer program to shape the new Aer Space offering, having scrapped its short-range business class a decade ago.

The move comes as lowcost competitors Ryanair and Easyjet are more aggressively chasing business customers.

The airline is also considering upgrading its Boeing 757 fleet with the same business class seat as introduced on its long-range Airbus A330s from April this year.

Aer Lingus CEO Stephen Kavanagh says he aspire to offering a three class service on trans-Atlantic routes.

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THE FLYING COLUMN

Shamrock sprigs

Aer Lingus looks into biggest ever winter expansion

A

er Lingus plans 5pc more seats between Dublin to JFK between January and March next in a big expansion of winter capacity, Seats to Boston are up 19pc, Toronto and San Francisco will have additional flights at Christmas, mid term (Feb 14) and Easter (April 5). Aer Lingus Winter 2015/2016 schedule will introduce two new routes, increased frequencies on sun and ski routes and improved timings on high frequency business routes.

Aer Lingus returns to Dublin-Liverpool with a difference: a new 16w daily service starts October 23 to feed Liverpudlians into Aer Lingus’s expanding transatlantic services.

Transatlantic capacity routes is up by 13pc with additional Thanksgiving, Christmas holidays, mid-term and Easter frequencies. The extra 275,000 seats represents its biggest growth in capacity in the past 10 years.

As first reported by Travel Extra,Dublin to Washington 4w seasonal service has been extended until January 4. Other innovations include: ■ Winter services to Orlando for the first time (4w until January 4 using a Boeing 752) ■ An increase in frequency on the Dublin to New York route from January through to March with 5pc growth versus last winter ■ A double daily operation in November, December and March from Dublin to Boston with 19pc capacity increase ■ Chicago is up to 10w from daily, up 18pc on winter last year, with a new 05.30 arrival time up until January 4 using an A330 and B752 ■ Additional frequencies on flights from Dublin to San Francisco and Orlando over Christmas, mid term (Feb 14) and Easter (April 5) ■ Flights between Dublin and Toronto will

BRITISH Airways is reducing the size

of carry-on baggage permitted on board its flights from August 18. BA said the move is as a result of "an increase in customers travelling with hand baggage that exceeds allowances".

AIR FRANCE said it may have to

close more long-haul routes if discussions with pilots to reduce costs are not successful. Air France is seeking to match its competitors by increasing the proportion of profitable routes from 50pc to 80pc.

SOUTHWEST CEO Gary Kelly saids it makes financial sense for his airline to retain its "bags fly free" policy. Southwest is the only US carrier left not to charge for bags.

STAR Alliance launched a round-theworld premium economy fare.

AER LINGUS brand is get its first

makeover since 1998. A new shopping, merchandising and personal platform will go live early 2016. A new loyalty recognition and reward programme will go live early in 2016.

Aer Lingus cabin crew at the A350 launch event in Dublin Airport on behalf of AerCap and Aer Lingus: Aiden McSherry, Jessica McElroy, Gráinne Kelly, Sorcha O'Rourke, Lydia Worrell, Lauren Cusack, Rebecca Murphy, Aisling Duff, Iain Burgess, Daniel Murphy, Nicole Mountaine and Jeane O'Reilly, continue throughout the winter with up to 4w flights ■ Flights between Shannon and Boston will operate throughout the winter while flights between Shannon and New York will be suspended from early January to mid-March, recommencing in-time for demand over St Patrick’s Day ■ Enhanced connecting flows between Europe and North America meaning customers can choose from over 100 onward connections across the USA and Canada with partner airlines ■ Aer Lingus’ offering between Ireland and Britain now covers 19 airports in England, Scotland and Wales and a total of 32 routes ■ 10pc more seats on Aer Lingus from Dublin to Manchester 34w with up to six

flights daily ■ 14pc more seats on Aer Lingus from Dublin to Birmingham 28w with up to six flights daily, serving peak business traffic ■ 15pc growth on Dublin to Paris route with an additional prime evening business flight 5pc growth on Dublin toAmsterdam service with up to five flights daily Three flights daily between Dublin and Brussels with improved evening times to facilitate day return business customers Additional flights to Zurich and Geneva with 10pc extra seats, to cover demand during ski season Up to 26 flights per week to the Canary Islands and Morocco, catering for demand over Christmas, mid-term and Easter

AVOLON

donated an extra €500,000 towards an aviation visitor centre at Baldonnell, bringing the budget of the project to €4m.

The leasing group released an illustrated book

by Michael Kennedy, Pioneers and Aviators.

WOW Air reported an 81pc load factor on its Dublin to Reykjavik route in June, carrying 3,300 passengers in its first month.

AIR FRANCE relaunched its business class amenity kits, complete with Clarins moisturiser, eye mask, lip balm and earplugs.

RYANAIR plans to sidestep price comparison websites by displaying their rivals’ fares on ryanair.com.

AIR CANADA took delivery of its

AER RIANTA opened a rum concept store in Barbados airport. first B787-9 Dreamliner.

LAGUARDIA Governor Cuomo announced a new LaGuardia Airport.

KLM will install world business class seats on its B787-9 aircraft.

For more information please contact us at +353-1-679-3958 or at aircanada@premair.ie

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THE FLYING COLUMN

Aviation with Gerry O’Hare

SITA report that 44pc of airlines planned to

install beacon technology over the next three years, short-range location devices that typically interact with mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Currently only around 9pc of airlines use them, largely as a means of informing travellers of details such as boarding gates and flight times. Other funciotns include directing people to departure lounges and baggage collection and sending targeted duty-free offers to travellers.

LEASING The CSO is to revise the Na-

tional Accounts for the past 15 years to take account of aircraft leasing. This should not affect GDP/GNP but will have a large effect on the reported Balance of Trade.

AIRASIA claims that Kuala Lumpur International Airport’s low-cost airline terminal klia2 is sinking.

ETIHAD Airways reported passenger

numbers up 12pc during Eid al-Fitr. Load factor out of Abu Dhabi was up 0.2pc to 82.3pc.

QANTAS added 16 retailers to its online loyalty shopping hub.

FLY

Leasing reported Q2 net loss of $58.3m after a $65.4m impairment charge. Operating lease revenue was up 13pc to $101.7m.

OBESITY Passenger James Bassos is

suing Etihad Airways claiming he got a back injury after being forced to sit next to an obese man while flying from Sydney to Dubai in 2011.

DELTA

is offering upgrades to private jets for premium passengers.

RYANAIR

celebrated 30 years after their inaugural fifteen-seater Bandeirante aircraft took off from Waterford for Gatwick airport in 1985. They have installed a De Lorean in Dublin remember for those too young to remember the 1980s.

MALAYSIA Airlines 40pc capacity cut

to Australia is likely to remove one of the lowcost travel options to Aus for Irish consumers.

LUFTHANSA

introduced their new

fare concept for Europe.

IBERIA

plans to open new routes include Tokyo, Doha, Johannesburg, Toronto, Guadalajara, Managua, San Juan de Puerto Rico, Brasilia, and Asuncion.

WARSAW was reported as having the

shortest connect times in Europe at 30 minutes.

LOT announced more frequencies to North America and new destinations.

BLUE Insurance announced a partnership

with Aer Lingus, offering Travel Insurance products on aerlingus.com from €9.56, annual travel insurance from €31.26, gadget Insurance (€1.49 per month), pet insurances from €69, wedding insurance from €73 and cover for over 65 years old.

JET2

flights from Belfast International to Prague and Rome have been taken off sale for Summer 2016.

Dublin Airport Head of Operations Gary McLean makes a presentation to Mark Owen from Edinburgh and Lisa Walsh from Tralee, the two and a half millionth passenger to use Dublin Airport in July. The couple were returning from a holiday in Corfu

Winter of content

A

Dublin heads for 24.9m passengers in 2015

fares war is likely on routes from Dublin airport this winter as Aer Lingus plans to incrses capacity on both short haul and long haul services and Ryanair plans to base 30 aircraft at its headquarter airport.

Previously Ryanair stated it would base 25 aircraft in Dublin, up from 21 last winter. Ryanair plans to match frequency and capacity increase splanned by Aer Lingus, with in-

DUBLIN PASSENGERS

1994 6.9m 1995 8m 1996 9.1m 1997 10.3m 1998 11.6m 1999 12.8m 2000 13.8m 2001 14.3m 2002 15.1m 2003 15.8m 2004 17m

A

2005 18.4m 2006 21.4m 2007 23.2m 2008 23.4m 2009 20.5m 2010 18.4m 2011 18.7m 2012 19.1m 2013 20.2m 2014 21.7m 2015 est 24.9m

creased frequencies on routes to destinations such as Berlin, Madrid and Manchester.

Aer inNgus wil move their Berlin flights form Schönefeld to BerlinTegel on October 25th, while Ryanair remain at Berlin-Schönefeld.

Ryanair will take delivery of as many as 38 new aircraft between September and next March.Aer Lingus also plans up to 26 flights per week to the Canary Islands and Morocco, catering for demand over Christmas, mid-term and Easter.

The increased compeition is due to push Dublin Airport passenegr numbers to record levels. Passenger numbers for July were 2.5m, making it the busiest month in airport history and passenger numbers for August bank hoiday weekend were up 16pc compared to last August Bank Holiday. if grwoth rates remain at 16pc the airport is on course for a record 24.9m passengers this year. A

354,000 passenger bank holiday weekend finished the busiest month ever although for the third timein four years the airport’s busiest day was the first weekend of the school holidays, 91,698 passed through Dublin on Sunday June 28.

For the previous seven years the August bank holiday provided the busiest day, including the 96,931 who squashed through the single-terminal airport on Sunday August 6 2006.

BUSIEST DAY OF YEAR

2004 Sat July 31 73,791 2005 Sun July 31 86,126 2006 Sun Aug6 96,931 2007 Sun Aug 5 93,275 2009 Sun July 26 81,113 2010 Sun July 25 71,431 2011 Sun July 31 73,515 2012 Fri June 29th 72,846 2013 Sun June 30th 78,040 2014 Sun, July 20th 81,521 2015 Sun June 28 91,698

AER LINGUS FARE DOWN 2.9pc

er Lingus Average fare was down 2.9pc to €91.65 in the latest results presentation by the airline.

Short-haul was down 0.5pc. long-haul up 10pc and load factor up 0.9 to 86.2pc. Business class was up 21.1pc. Guest satisfaction in business class was up 28pc. Retail revenue is up 4.8pc per passenger to €19.47 and 5.8pc in total to €54.7m.

Revenue from advance bookings is up 19pc to €56m, helped by the weaker euro. Americans are playing nearly 10pc less for their tickets than they were last year but while 25pc of revenue is in US$ so are 37pc of costs.

Net cash at 30 June 2015 of €641m compared to €586m a year ago, after €135m was paid to DB Pension schemes .

Aircraft and equipment contracted is €897m (that hardly includes the cost of nine A350s?). For 2015, 38pc of fuel has been hedged at an average $758 per tonne.

Cost cutting is to focus on third party ground handling costs, especially in Continental Europe.

Three business sectors have been identified by the airline: long haul, European cities and European

leisure/ Mediterranean destinations.

Washington is trading above expectations, the third Dublin-JFK frequency is performing well, additional capacity to other destinations including Dublin to San Francisco and Shannon-Boston is outperforming expectation.

The B757 Business class configuration is to be updated to A330 standard “in the near future.”

025 DAA_Layout 1 07/08/2015 15:16 Page 1

www.transavia.com

Experience Paris with a french airline Land at

Paris Orly From

40

Taxes included*

*Price one way from â‚Ź 40, taxes included, from Dublin airport. Subject to terms, conditions and availability. Excludes cost of hold luggage.

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AVIATION

ue to its size, arrivals and departures through London City Airport can be much quicker and easier than the larger London airports.

The airport can be accessed by taxi, bus or Underground/DLR. Its single terminal incorporates shops, restaurants and cafes, information and taxi desks, a bureau de change and a left luggage facility.

London City Airport arrivals come through the first floor and can be met on the ground floor as you enter the small terminal. After you leave the aircraft, you'll pass through passport control, baggage reclaim and Customs.

London City Airport departures can be found on the first floor of the terminal. All passengers must clear security control before entering the departure lounge, where you'll find shops, bars and cafes. The departures area is small but has a good choice of outlets, complimentary WiFi throughout and lots of comfortable seating.

Declan Collier, the Dublin born CEO of London City Airport says: “London City Airport has the best transport links in the UK, is the most punctual airport in the UK and, for the business traveller, has the best location in the UK. ‘We offer a unique time-based brand proposition – a 20 minute check-in and a 15 minute arrival – and we’re investing heavily in new technology to both measure and maintain that

Declan Collier

London City Airport

The 15-minute airport

Airport of the year winner stresses speed and access

London City airport claims a 15 minute time scale from aircraft to train proposition. Our team members, wherever they work and whatever their job, know that they are part of delivering a better journey to the passenger and are proud to do so – this award recognises their commitment and their achievements.”

A single runway handles short-haul flights with a strong emphasis on business travel to Europe and specialised flights to New York. Airlines that currently fly from London City Airport include: British Airways, Alitalia, Blue Islands, CityJet, KLM, Lufthansa, Luxair, Sky Work and Swiss International Airlines.

Once you've arrived and passed through London City Airport, there are a number of options at your disposal for your onward journey into London.

Tube London City Airport is well-connected to the Tube network. The airport has its own stop on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), which takes you to Tube interchange

stations such as Canning Town, Stratford and Bank. For more information visit the Transport for London (TfL) website.

If you are going to be in London for more than a day, it's worth booking a Visitor Oyster Card in advance. The Visitor Oyster Card is delivered to your home before you arrive in London. This means you can board the Tube right away.

If you do not have a Visitor Oyster Card, but still plan to travel around London for more than a day, you can buy an Oyster card at the airport Tube station. Exit the airport and follow the signs for the Underground. You can purchase an Oyster card at the cashier window.

Catch the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) to London City Airport.

Services run every eight to 15 minutes. Fares on the DLR are the same as those on the Tube.

Bus Local bus routes serving the airport are the 473 (Stratford, Silvertown,

North Woolwich, and Prince Regent DLR Station) and the 474 (Canning Town, North Woolwich and East Beckton via Silvertown). Standard bus fares apply.

Oyster and Travelcards are accepted.

Taxi There are usually taxis queuing for customers at London City Airport. The cost of the cab is metered and displayed inside the cab. Only use a reputable mini-cab and never use unauthorised drivers. The City Airport website has

average fares and you can ask the driver or mini-cab company how much your journey will cost beforehand.

There are a number of mprivate chauffeur services in London that can pick you up from London City Airport. Your driver will make themselves known to you usually by using a sign as you exit the terminal.

You can find information about parking in London on the NCP (National Car Parks) website.

Accessible Transport

The Docklands Light Railway was England's first fully accessible railway for wheelchair users.

There are lifts, escalators and/or ramps on every station platform of the DLR and all platforms are level with the trains for step-free access.

There is also a designated wheelchair/pram bay on every train.

Disabled travellers should be aware that a significant number of Tube stations are not equipped with lifts.

Dermot Desmond purchased London City Airport from Mowlem for £23.5m in 1995.and sold it in October 2006 for £750m to a consortium consisting of insurer AIG, GE Capital and Credit Suisse.

031 london airport_Layout 1 07/08/2015 11:31 Page 1

ARRIVE BETTER CONNECTED.

Time is precious, so we promise to take up as little of yours as possible. On average, our passengers can be in a taxi or boarding a DLR train within 15 minutes of landing. On departure, passengers require only 20 minutes from terminal entrance to departure lounge. And because we’re the only London airport that’s actually in London, just 25 minutes from Westminster, you’re always closer to where you need to be.

Quicker, more punctual and actually in London.

DAILY FLIGHTS FROM DUBLIN TO LONDON CITY AIRPORT

00369 Travel Extra Irish market FP 240x330 indd 1

17/07/2015 16:21

Page 032 Afloat 06/08/2015 10:07 Page 1

SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 32

AFLOAT CRYSTAL Cruises CEO Edie Ro-

driguez announced their much anticipated fleet expansion in Leknes this week to commence in 2018. Three new all-suite all-balcony 1,000 passenger Crystal Exclusive Class cruise ships will join the two-ship fleet, with open seating in the main dining room and a one-to-one passenger-to-crew ratio. Cabins will have a minimum of 400 square feet, double the size of cabins found on other luxury lines' vessels.

Ceiling heights will be raised by a foot to 8 feet in suites and on decks. The ships, to be built at Lloyd Werft shipyard, in Germany, and will be built to polar ice class standards, enabling Crystal Cruises to operate large luxury expedition ships to the Antarctic.

HURTIGRUTEN Daniel Skjeldam,

CEO of Hurtigruten, says a 320-passenger vessel built in 2009 in Portugal and intended to sail between Portugal and the Azores, Atlántida has been given it the temporary name MS Norway Explorer and will replace the Midnatsol, which will be re-deployed in Antarctica alongside the MS Fram for the 2016/17 season.

CELEBRITY Cruises are changing its pricing model again so passengers will no longer be able to buy simply a cabin, other than inside rooms, prices for ocean views, balconies, Aqua, Concierge and Suites will have up to four inclusions: the Classic beverage package, unlimited Internet, gratuities or $150 per person in onboard credit.

MSC Cruises will homeport the,2,120-guest MSC Opera in Havana for the winter 2015-16 season, a first for Cuba.

ROSSLARE Iarnród Éireann, Port

Authority for Rosslare Europort, hosted the first meeting of a new Stakeholder Advisory Group for the Europort.

OCEANIA Cruises' Insignia will em-

bark on a 180-day world cruise on January 6, 2017, one of the longest in the cruise industry.

CRYSTAL Cruises are to add a river

cruise line, a yacht cruises division, a private jet and a mini-submarine.

TRAVEL Department launch a Rhine

river cruise on September 25. Package includes 7 nights full board basis on the Superior ARosa Aqua, transfers, flights from Dublin and one night in the 4* Maritim Hotel Cologne on a half board basis. See traveldepartment.ie.

MSC Cruises is to rename MSC Club the

MSC Voyagers Club and revamp its loyalty scheme, introduce a new points earning system and remove of top tier perks.

IRISH Ferries celebrates 20 years of its

service from Rosslare to Roscoff. Since launching in 1995, the route has recorded 1,230 ferry arrivals and departures, carrying 1.5m passengers and 400,000 vehicles.

ROYAL

Caribbean's oldest ship, Majesty of the Seas is not to transfer to Pullmantur in 2016 as expected, instead it will continue sailing with Royal Caribbean following an extensive makeover.

Fred Olsen’s four B’s in Bergen

Fred lines up 4

Cruise line goes back to Norway routes to celebrate

F

red Olsen Cruise Lines brought together of its fleet of four ships, Balmoral, Braemar, Boudicca and Black Watch to Bergen, Norway.

They assembled for the 4 Bs in Bergen’event named after the initial letter of each of the four Fred Olsen ships, the first time ever that the fleet has converged in one place, anywhere in the world.

The four B’s participated in a specially arrangedfireboatsaluteanddepositedaroundfour thousand passengers ashore to Bergen staples

such as the Fish Market, Mount Floyen, and the harbour front. Guests took part in a treasure hunt and went on specially-themed shore excursions.

The ships arrived in convoy and formed up into diamond formation for their evening departure.

Passengers dined on Norwegian dishes including home-made gravadlax and cloudberry pie, and drank their fill of complimentary cocktails..Theyweremetbyamarchingbandandlocals in Norwegian national costume. During the daytheywereentertainedbyaninter-crewtug-of-

war contest and performances by opera singer Anthony Stewart-Lloyd.

All four ships have undergone stretching operations at some stage. Guests included Fred OlsenandFredOlsenJnr,thefifthandsixthgenerationsofthefamily companywhichbegan operations from the village of Hvitsten, just outside Oslo, in 1848.

HugepublicitywasgeneratedbyCunard’sseriesofrendezvousfeaturingthethreeQueens,and it is likely Fred Olsen were influenced by this in planning the 4B’s in Bergen.

AIDA GOES FOR BIGGER SHIPS

C

arnival’s first two of four new ships will go to its German cruise line, AIDA. Carnival and its two shipbuilding partners, Meyer Werft and Fincantieri, will launch nine new ships over a four-year period between 2019-2022, the sec-

ond phase of a building spree for Carnival that will bring 10 new ships to its fleet by 2018.

Costa Cruises is to build two new LNG powered 6,600-passenger ships, slightly bigger than Royal Caribbean's 6,450-passenger Oasis-class ships.

AIDA_Aida Nachhaltigkeit: more to come

CUNARD & PRINCESS HOST TRADE

A

s if to prove how badly needed are Dublin Port’s €230m expansion plans, some for the biggest called by in tandem this summer, including P&O’s Britannia, Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth and Royal Princess.

It was an opportunity for a joint promotion by Royal and Cunard. “We deal with the same agents and we are not really in competition with each other so it was too good an opportunity to miss,” Natalie Papoutsoglou of Princess said.

On the ground Dawn Conway of Sunway put her organisational skills to use to recruit the leading agents. Christine Hannon of Cunard described the cruise line of the three Queen’s advantages, including an enhanced

transatlantic programme and a large passenger to space ratio and answered questions about onboard gratuities, drinks packages, average cruise age and onboard activates.

Page 033 travel extra 20 years 06/08/2015 10:28 Page 1

SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 33

TRAVEL EXTRA 1995-2015

Maureen Ledwith, Kevin O'Connor and Ann Saunders

Your favourite paper is 20 years young

T Linda Bacuzzi at the launch of Travel Extra in 1995.

Declan Mescall and Frank Byrne at the launch of Travel Extra in 1995.

Liam Burke, Jacinta MaGlynn and Eugene Corcoran at the launch of Travel Extra in 1995.

Eanna Brophy, Tony Barry and Colette Barry at the launch of Travel Extra in 1995.

Paddy Dignam, Freddie O'Neill, Gabriel Malone and Brendan Moran

Maura McEldowney, Diarmuid MacDermott and Grainne Cryan

ravel Extra began life when the Irish Press closed and I suddenly found myself with time on my hands, an idea in my head and hope in my heart.

How, I wondered, would the great Irish travelling public manage without the Irish Press regularly carrying my words of wisdom and guidance?

It was a shocking thought.

And one that I swiftly consigned to the dustbin of history.

The germ of an idea was growing in my addled old brain. I had specialized in stories on tourism, holidays, airlines, shipping, travel agents and tour operators at the Press.

Now the Irish Press was gone, was there an opening in the market for a new venture, one specifically geared to the travelling public and those seeking to both send Irish people abroad and encourage outsiders to visit our green and pleasant land?

This was just before the Celtic Tiger began to roar and money was sparse. But I knew the love affair between the Irish people and their annual holidays was as safe as houses (well, as safe as houses were then).

I had loyal support from the Irish travel trade. Everyone knew me.

Many of them even liked me. But, hard-nosed as they are, no venture could have succeeded on the basis of friendship alone.

The Irish Times, then, did not treat the tourism business with any degree of seriousness. That left just Tony O’Reilly’s Irish Independent.

There was the opening. But was I the person to dash into the breach?

The two businesses I knew well were (1) travel and tourism and (2) publishing. Could I package the

Tony Barry, Gerry O'Hare, Toddy O'Sullivan and John Callely from Whiskey Corner which hosted the event at the launch two together and come up with a such as Budget Travel/Gillian popular product?

Bowler etc.

These were also the days when Trouble was, the companies who computerized lay-out was in its in- advertised in the paper were not fancy and, expert that I am in some quick to pay their bills – whereas fields, the mysteries of the com- the printing companies wanted cash puter still elude me to this day. on the nail and the bank was quick I didn’t even have a computer in to take offence if we extended our those days – unless you could an overdraft. ancient, dusty Amstrad using sixSoon we reached an impasse. inch diameter REALLY floppy The newly There was, at that time, disks. an employment-generating body So, there was the opening and the called FAS – since abolished. potential for my good self to fill the FAS had invited all Irish Press gap. Where to get the investment, ex-employees to a meeting where though, to get the show on the they presented different options for road? creating new businesses.

First port of call was, of course, With Tony Barry, formerly of the my own wallet. The miserly five Evening Herald, on board – along grand I received in statutory redun- with his then state-of-the-art comdancy from the government went puter and expertise in page design, into the pot – as did similar munif- I set about drawing up a plan for a icence from my spouse. worker co-operative with FAS as Hardly enough to start a serious our main support. publishing business. But a start.

This involved much hard work The Bank of Ireland in my home drawing up accounts, business provillage of Malahide was persuaded posals and plans, ideas for distributo grant us an overdraft. tion and advertising.

We launched in December 1995 Advertising. That was the key to at the Whiskey Corner with a great our potential survival. Would adshow of support from my friends vertisers spend money buying and colleagues. space in an entirely new publicaThen a bit more also on what tion? Only time would tell. companies supported the paper, GERRY O’HARE

John Browne, Liam Flynn and Paddy Dignam

Liam Mackey, Gerry O'Hare and Cyril Byrne

Page 034-035 Agent 06/08/2015 11:05 Page 1

SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 34

GLOBAL VILLAGE

Inside the Travel Business

PORTUGAL’s Tourist Office moved

into a new office this week. The new address is 70 Upper Leeson Street, Dublin 4. A direct phone is being set up. In the meantime, call +353 (0) 833254947. Celina Tavares says there will be limited access to emails tomorrow, July 20, but they will try and revert to you as soon as they can.

TRAVEL Department has added

Ethiopia to its portfolio, utilising the new direct service form Dublin to Addis Adaba

SKAL Registration is open for the 2015

Skål World Congress, which takes place in Torremolinos, Spain from Oct 28 to Nov 1 2015

TUI There were raised eyebrows at the letter

from TUI reducing commission to 7pc and adding a €20 surcharge to seat only. The new restrictions apply to bookings from the six counties only and do not impact on Falcon Holidays and its suite of products from Ireland.

MALDIVES Dinesh Bhaskar was in

Dublin to promote Atmosphere Hotels & Resorts Maldives experiences. Dinesh showcased Atmosphere Kanifushi’s impressive platinum plus product. The idea is to couple one meal plan, all inclusive, with a five-star experience.

Guests arrive by seaplane. Villas have direct access to the stretch of beautiful white beach and turquoise lagoon. There are four restaurants to choose from, and the mini bar is replenished twice a day with your chosen beverage. Activities include sunset fishing, diving and snorkelling. Atmosphere are launching two new products: Oblu by Atmosphere opens in November 2015 and Ozen opens in April 2016.

OVERSEAS

trips made by Irish residents, which have been flat since 2010, grew 9.8pc in the six months to June to 3.2m and grew 7.6pc to 1.9m for the three months AprilJune.

ETHIOPIAN Airlines appointed Carole

Smith’s SynNeo to manage their marketing, PR and social media.

Former sales manager of Bewley’s Hotel, Leopardstown, Lisa Rabbitte, was appointed as Emirates’ leisure sales executive.

DUBLIN-based Accident & General In-

surance Services has secured a travel insurance broker deal with specialist and niche insurer UK General using the in-house capacity of its Irish business. The deal provides travel insurance through its network of travel agents and tour operators in Ireland and parts of England.

TRAVELPORT

is offering funding to travel tech start-ups based in Ireland, England and the Nordics. Winning applicants will be mentored by Travelport’s team and will have access to their APIs, software development kits and will be given feedback from Travelport’s customers.

TUI Chris Browne announced that she will

leave TUI Aviation in September and will take the rest of the year off to spend time with her family.

Lufthansa are ore dependent on travel agents than many of their rivals (inset) Carsten Spohr

Lufthy’s legacy

T

Fears that GDS fee will be the start of trend

he Irish Travel Agents Association declared its support for ECTAA’s legal action against Lufthansa’s proposed GDS fee.

There has been hostile reaction from across the trade to Lufthansa’s plan to tax bookings made via middlemen.

The levy will apply to bookings made via GDS, Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport and Cowers both offline and online third party intermediaries.

The levy will apply on every first issue ticket for Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, and Swiss

International Airlines worldwide.

Sabre CEO Tom Klein told investors that he did not see it as a trend. “what we have is one announced action. Nothing has happened yet, except that we GDS’s have taken a haircut on our market cap, as have our competitors.”

“I would suggest that a carrier like Lufthansa, and maybe even specifically Lufthansa, gets as much or more value out of GDS services as any other airline group in the world.

About 70% of Lufthansa’s revenue comes through GDSs. “

What they’ve done is what airlines do when they signal airfare increases.

They say they might do this in the future. I think it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out in September.”

A panel session at the GBTA Convention in Orlando heard that Lufthansa's decision to charge €16 for GDS bookings from September 1.

The Distribution Cost Charge, would not have been possible 20 years ago when buyers had more options over contracting and booking.

RUSH OF NEW LICENSES WITH CAR

T

he Commission of Aviation Regulation set mid August as the deadline for receipt of completed licence application at standard fee for the November licensing round.

Decision-in-principle letters for completed applications will be issued of September 15 and October 15 is the deadline for receipt of applicants’ bonds.

See here for details, while agents with difficulties can email or call +3531 6611700. New agent licenses granted by CAR included: ■ Green Light Travel

based in Sandyford Industrial Estate ■ Sandra Corkin's Oasis Travel who have two branches in Belfast at Howard Street and Lisburn Road, and three others in Lisburn, Bangor and Holywood.

■ Green Life Tours based in Aungier Street, Dublin 2, trading as Francigena Ways, Camino Ireland, Camino Ways, Explore World Heritage, Ireland Ways and Rustic Rambles.

■ Apex Travel Consulting trading as GPS Travel.

■ Manasik Tours has been licensed for an additional

branch at 80 Clanbrassil Street Lower, Dublin 8.

■ Seatem Ireland trading as Keith Prowse Tickets and Travel Places has had a name change approved to Travel Direction Ltd. ■ World Travel Centre has had three branch addresses deleted, 42 Baggot Street Lower, Dublin 2; 10 Burgh Quay, Dublin 2; and Sui Finn House, Cookstown Industrial Estate, Tallaght, and two added 43 Pearse Street, Dublin 2, and Plaza Complex, Belgard Road, Tallaght.

■ Paul Hackett's

ClickandGo parent Simplysun has had two new trading names in addition to ClickandGo: Holidays with Aer Lingus and Independent Travel.

It means that two licensed travel agents now have Independent news and media related trading names, Clickandgo’s parent Simplysun and Cassidy Travel parent Linevana while P&P Associates, who initially partnered with the Irish Independent travel section, also registering the trading name of Independent.ie Travel.

Page 035 Agent 10/08/2015 11:00 Page 1

SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 35

Inside the Travel Business

GLOBAL VILLAGE

Royal’s new head M

Michaela to head up RCCL Irish team

ichaela Banks is the new Regional Sales Manager, Ireland for the cruise market leader on the island, Royal Caribbean International.

She joins Royal Caribbean from Thomas Cook, will report into Alex Johnston, Head of Retail, Ireland/Britain, based from the Dublin office alongside National Sales Managers Jenny Rafter and Jennifer Callister.

Ben Bouldin said: “Ireland is a hugely important market for us.

We’ve doubled the size of our sales team and it is going from strength to strength.”

The team based in Ireland will continue to be strongly supported by the cross-functional network based in the English office in Weybridge, led by Holly Wilkinson.

Royal’s trade campaigns in recent years have focussed on the credit card

Michaela Banks of RCCL style Royal Club, which offers benefits to agents who accumulate points through Royal caribbean sales.

RCL Cruises also launched a new reservation system this year, Espresso, for travel agents selling Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Club Cruises. The new system will launch

in March.

Stuart Leven, Royal Caribbean's two country MD for Ireland and Britain, said: “We're on a mission to change holidaymakers' expectations.

We are constantly working to bring the innovation of our newest ships to existing ships across the fleet, ensuring that every ship is our best ship.”

“Ships like our Quantum class vessels will help attract new groups of people and build the future of cruising. Ireland and Britain is our second largest market and with 1.7m from the two countries taking a cruise every year it has huge importance for our business.”

Royal Caribbean will base all three of its Oasis-class cruise ships in Florida in 2016. Harmony of the Seas, will launch April 2016 and will replace Oasis of the Seas in Port Everglades in autumn 2016.

INDUSTRY TRADE SHOW MOVE TO CITY CENTRE

T

he Irish Travel industry business show is likely to move to the city centre in March-April 2016. The event will likely take place on a Wednesday of Thursday, including the AGM of the Irish Travel Agents Association.

It will be a one day event after feed back from members and sup-

pliers.

Irish travel agents reported their busiest July in sales in seven years, according to the Irish Travel Agents Association.

Conversion rates are reported as very high and demand for 2016 is up by more than 16pc.

Some members are reporting that the high end is doing very well.

The ITAA report strong demand for their annual conference in Jerez on October 1-4 is very high.

The ITAA is looking at setting up an academy so as to fast track new entrants to work in the travel industry. There are currently 25 vacancies around the country in the industry.

BEST4TRAVEL EXPAND HOME WORKER SCHEME certain destinations and particular properties.

They sign into the system when they want and work their own hours.” “Focussed selling drives the business into certain places and certain resorts with high end commissions, rather than trying to be everything to everyone.”

Home workers who have been recruited include Wendy Aiken, Es-

ther Corcoran, Audrey Grennan, Paula Scanlon, Jill Sheeran, Mike Shinnors, Margaret Trainor and Denise Walsh. “It has worked well in England. We have worked it for a year in Ireland and checked what the pitfalls are.” Holiday Experts give 60pc commission for own client bookings, and 30pc for the driven business.

AMADEUS half year results showed revenue was up 14.2pc to €1,976.8m, EBITDA grew 10.8pc to €778.8m and total air travel agency bookings increased 10.0pc to 265.9m.

On the IT Solutions side, Passengers Boarded increased 7.8pc, to 354.2m.

ROYAL Caribbean’s Club Royal are of-

fering a chance to win a 7 Night Dubai cruise onboard Splendour of the Seas exclusive to Irish Trade Partners. Register Splendour of the Seas 2015/16 Dubai bookings on myclubroyal.ie by September 30.

TOPFLIGHT Deirdre Grant joined

Topflight’s Worldwide division to head up the worldwide group department. Deirdre started in travel organising the Raphoe Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes and her 36-year career includes 22 years at the helm of Driftaway Travel in Letterkenny from 1987 to 2009.

Holiday Experts

Home working with a difference BUSINESS DELIVERED TO YOU at home dedicated websites Earn Up to 60% commiSsion from home

no monthly or start-up fees + 1 YEAR FREE FACILITY CHARGES

enhanced supplier agreements

free marketing and support FOR N DED TIO BON OTEC AND RS PR ED E ENC OM LIC CUST R YOU

B

est4travel has extended its campaign to build up a network of home worker travel agents.

“The concept of the business is holiday experts who are experts who can deliver that expertise to an individual customer,” says Jeff Collins who set up Holiday Experts.

“The home workers will become experts on

JUSTSUNSHINE shut their Irish operation, as expected. John Grehan technically finished with them this week but has been on holiday for the last fortnight. The tour operator continues to sell non-Tunisia product out of London.. Two weeks after the shootings that killed 38 holiday makers from five countries, including three Irish, Ireland an d Britain both updated their Travel Advisory advising all but essential; travel to Tunisia (the semantic is important for travel insurance purposes).

Sounds like the package you’ve been searching for?

email us: recruitment@holidayexperts.ie

€

Page 036 window seat 06/08/2015 12:02 Page 1

SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 36

WINDOW SEAT Last month in numbers 1 Ryanair’s world ranking in international passengers carried, according to IATA.

6 Ryanair’s world ranking overall when domestic and international passenge numbers,

22 Number of kennels for dogs on refurbished Cunard's flagship Queen Mary

€700 cost of bringing your dog on a cruise.

6,600 Number of passengers on new Carnival ships, making them biggest inthe world,

2.5m Number of passengers through

Dublin airport, the busiest July in its 75 year history.

24.96m Projected passengers through

Dublin airport, if 15pc increase is sustained for H2 of 2015

A PICTURE IS WORTH 2,600Km

A

small shelf of books have been spawned by Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way, for anyone trying to snatch a few memories to bring home, Carsten Krieger’s is a valuable addition.

Some of the great landscapes of the tourist world are marked by big skies and intense light.

But the west does not do intensity, it does a subtlety so soft and understated the movement has passé before you realise it.

That is where Krieger’s camera comes in handy.

The photograph of Loop Head

BOOKS: Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way

by Carsten Krieger ( O’Brien Press)

lighthouse on Page 93 or Keel Strand on page 50 are more than memories of the scenes you find along the 2,600km route, landscapes of the imagination, the happenchance of light and atmosphere and (this being the WAW, a daily seasonal slide-show), rendering the substance and quintessence of the landscape as great photographers do.

He also joins the conversation, not in the social media sense, but

as it should be, done, by small observations and the utterances of some of the characters you meet along the way, and those that passed before, Praeger, Boll and everyone who was entranced. It is like arriving in someone’s living room and hearing all the great things that we didn’t have time to hang around for.

Is that how we remember the journey It doesn’t matter. The images might be replaced by others, equally beautiful, if we had passed half an hour later,

Busman’s holiday: Keith Chuter

Every month we ask a leading travel professional to write about their personal holiday experience. This month: Keith Chrter, Ireland manager of British Airways

B

eing brought up in Southeast London meant that the annual family holidays were always to Margate.

I remember the family cramming into Dad's old Ford Cortina and meandering down the A2. Passing, in those days, the many hop fields that made Kent famous until in the distance I could see the big wheel and roller coaster at Dreamland. When we got there it was ride after ride at the Fun Fair, playing on the penny slots, followed by paddling in the sea and of course we finished each day with fish and chips eaten out of newspaper. Did we care about the weather?

Nah! When my own children were younger,

I

we went Cornwall, St Ives, Penzance and Carbis Bay. Each day we would walk along the miles of beaches, enjoy pub lunches and of course the kids took part in the daily 'let's bury Dad in the sand!'.

As they got older and sun became an essential element, we had many happy holidays in the Canaries, Fuerteventura, Tenerife and Lanzarote.

Did we care about the weather? Yes! Now the children are adults and we are 'home alone,' the holiday destination of choice has got to be Bermuda. For us it is just the best. It’s only a seven hour flight to a small bit of paradise in the middle of the Atlantic. Bermuda is an old British outpost but offers great weather, great beaches, great restaurants and a friendly welcome. For those who

Bermuda Fairmont: on the world’s mst beautiful island? haven't tried the local speciality - a Dark 'n' Stormy - you just don't know what you are missing! Do we care about the weather? Nah!!

As for places I’ve yet to see. The Indian Ocean is definitely on my list. Mau-

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

t is a tricky time for tourists to the Middle East, and all whose lives depend on them.

Palmyra, an ancient city famed for its thousand columns, is one of the great heritage tourist attractions of Syria.

Sadly, it may be lost to future generations, having fallen to the Caliphate (known in the west as ISIS). Four of Syria’s six world heritage sites lie in ruins. In May IS swept into control of a fifth.

Mosul’s museum was ransacked

with chainsaws earlier this year.

The contents of the museum in Raqqa, IS’s capital in Syria, have been removed to places unknown.

Old stones are less important than human lives in the greater scheme of things. Militants have slain tourists at major sites, targeting Tunis’s Bardo Museum with its unparalleled collection of Roman mosaics in March this year (and earlier, Luxor in 1997).

So far, IS does not seem to have harmed Palmyra, a city first men-

tioned in the 19th century BCE and the capital of the redoubtable Zenobia. Archaeologists fear for it, and for other sites in the area.

The iconic (and thanks to Indiana Jones, familiar) rock-hewn caves of Petra are close to another centre of IS support, the Jordanian city of Maʿ n. Along the Libyan coast, militants are within rocket range of the world’s best preserved Roman cities of Cyrene, Leptis Magna and Sabratha. Like Palmyra, it might be a cas eof go before they blow.

ritius or the Maldives - the Far East Cambodia or Vietnam.

The World is so reachable now it'll be hard to choose one when we finally get bored with Bermuda...If we ever will!

IN YOUR NEXT TRAVEL EXTRA: Available to Travel Agents or online Sept 14 2015

SKI & SNOWBOARD A villa in Val d’isere AUSTRIA STILL RULES Andorra

Page 037 pics 06/08/2015 11:17 Page 1

SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 37

MEETING PLACE

d om Travel Celbridge an Ciara Mooney of Freed the at go ica pton Hotels Ch Raquel Toro from Kim i nt eve tels Kjmpton Ho

Deirdre Sweeny of Su nway and Kirstin Skinn er of American Holidays at Kjmpton Hotels eve nt in

Out and about with the Travel Trade

Ashlee Ciora of Greater Palm Springs and Francine Sheridan of Visit Los Angeles at the Visit California event

Veronica Flood of Tour America, Ivan Beacom of Aer Lingus and Liz Wright of Tour America at the Visit California event at Drury Buildings, Dublin

a of Broker and Julie Hann Clare Dunne of Travel ise Clem Walshe of Lowcostbeds and Sharon Jorcru rd Queen Elizabeth na Cu the dan of The Travel Corporation at the Kjmpton on Co ise Cru Hotels event in Chapter One ship visit to Dublin

Clodagh Oxley of Visit USA, Joe Tully of Tully' s Travel and Ingrid Ruz of Kimpton at the Kjmpto n Hotels event in Chapter One

ine yte of ATTS and Lorra Catherine Grennell Wh gate the at rity tho Au rt po Costello of Dublin Air l Europe Airpost flight event for the inaugura

Keith Grahamand Mukes h Sharma of Selective Travel Management cel ebrate a £100m three year contract

Bernie Burke of Travel Centres and Carl Lone rgan of Club Travel at the Kimpton Hotels event in Chapter One Dublin

vel/Budget Travel and Godfrey Lydon of Club Tra anish Tourist Board at the Sp the of ll Kathryn McDonne mines” in the Morgan celebration of the “San Fer

Alison Nicholls of Unive rsal and Dee Burdock of American Holidays at the Visit California eve nt at Drury Buildings, Dublin ,

Dave Hennessy of Amrican Sky, Dave Powell of Kimpton San Francisco and Ciara Foley of Platinum Travel chairman of the Visit USA Committee at the Kjmpton Hotels event in Chapter One

n tricia Herrera of Kimpto Margaret Geraghty, Pa 7 74 hael Caslin of hotels New York and Mic tels event Ho n pto Kim Travel at the

Dominic Burke of Travel Centres, Dee Burdock of American Holidays and Alex Batista of Kimpton Hotels at the Kjmpton Hotels event

Darach Culligan, Susan Culligan, Natalie Creaven of Cassidy Tra vel and James Malone of Rathgar Travell on the Cunard Queen Elizab eth

Colleen Butler of Bookabed and Barry Hammond of Sunway at the Kjmpton Hotels event in Chapter One Dublin

m Travel and Keith Austin Carroll of Platinu ys at the Kjmpton Hotels Chuter of British Airwa event

Page 037 pics 06/08/2015 11:17 Page 2

SEPTEMBER 2015 PAGE 38

MEETING PLACE

d lleen Butler of Bookabe Holly Best of Virgin, Co it Vis the at lley Va Napa and Angela Jackson of ry Buildings, Dublin Dru at nt eve a rni lifo Ca

Patricia Purdue of Vis it Massachusetts and Judy McCluskey of McCluske y PR at the Kimpton Ho tels event in Chapter On e Dublin

and Monica Rossi of Paul Harvie of GoHop atles during the Air Be s Abbey Travel in Lo to Cuba France travel trade trip

Beverleigh Fly of Booka bed and Austin Carroll of Platinum Travel at the Visit California event at Drury Buildings, Dublin .

gdon Beach with Aisling Briton Dacron of Huntin ys eux of American Holida Gavin and John Dever sco nci Fra n Pier 38, Sa and Jodi Cumming of

Greg Evans and Cindy Brewster of Kimpton Group at the Kjmpton Hotels event in Chapter One Dublin,

Out and about with the Travel Trade

Niki Stanford of Clickandgo and Christine Scully Jackie Alvarez of Santa Monica travel & tou rism, Lee of Marble City Travel on the Cunard Queen Eliz- Osborne of Bookabed and Aoife Gregg of Un ited at the Visit California event at Dru abeth cruise ship visit to Dublin ry Buildings, Dublin

Michelle Harley of Tullys Travel, receives her prize from Donna Kenny and Egle Godliauskaite of The Travel Croporation

Travel, Ekaine Seale of Fiona Flaherty of Fahy Guill of McGuill Travel Suwnay and Shauna Mc n Elizabeth cruise ship Dundalk Cunard Quee

James Fleming of Sunway, Moyra O'Donoghue of Roscrea Travel and David Kinsella of Etravel on the Cunard Queen Elizabeth cruise ship visit to Dublin

Elma Barreiro of the Spani sh Tourist Board and Joh n Galligan of John Galligan Travel at the celebration of the “San Fermines” in the Morgan, Dublin

Richard Cullen of Killiney Travel, Clare Dunne of Travel Broker and Shane Cullen of Killiney Travel at the celebration of the “San Fermines” in the Morgan, Dublin

d of Princess Cruises an Natalie Papoutsoglou rd na nard on the Cu Christine Hannon of Cu ship visit to Dublin ise cru eth Queen Elizab

Martin Skelly President of Yvonne O'Donoghue of O'Donoghue Travel, the ITAA with Inma Berna beu and Kathryn McDonnell of the Dawn Conway of Sunway, Ciara Mooney of Spanish TB at the celebra tion of the “Sa Freedom Travel and Lorraine Kenny of Asksusan n Fermines” in the Morga n,

Ivan Beacom of Aer LIngus and David O'Grady of E-travel at the Kjmpton Hotels event in Chapter One Dublin

TravCo, patricia O'Connor of Tara Srafranck of Cruise d nar Cu the of Skytours on elbroker and Gillian Lynch blin Du p visit to Queen Elizabeth cruise shi

page 039 07/04/2015 13:21 Page 1

Featuring:

Wedding & Honeymoon Destinations at Home and Abroad

Date for your diary:

YOUR TRADE DAY Friday 22nd January, 2016 VENUE

RDS Simmonscourt | Simmonscourt Road Ballsbridge | Dublin 4

EXHIBIT

Please contact Maureen Ledwith, Sales Director t: + 353 (0)1 291 3700 e: maureen@bizex.ie

To find out more log on to:

www.holidayworldshow.com

DUBLIN

HOLIDAY WORLD 2016 SHOW DATES RDS SIMMONSCOURT

Fri Fri Sat Sun

Jan Jan Jan Jan

22nd 22nd 23rd 24th

10am 1 pm 11am 11am

-

1pm 7pm 5.30pm 5.30pm

Trade Trade Trade Trade

Only and Public and Public and Public

BELFAST

HOLIDAY WORLD 2016 SHOW DATES TITANIC EXHIBITION CENTRE

Fri Jan 15th Sat Jan 16th Sun Jan 17th

1 pm - 6 pm Trade and Public 11am - 5.30pm Trade and Public 11am - 5.30pm Trade and Public

100627 50+ VILLAGE 2016 full page.qxp_100627 50+ VILLAGE 2016 full page 02/06/2015 16:24 Page 1

Lifestyle & Living for the over 50’s

e g a l l i V

TITANIC EXHIBITION CENTRE TITANIC QUARTER - BELFAST BT3 9EP

15th/17th January 2016

The Belfast Telegraph 50+Village will be staged

alongside the highly successful Holiday World Show, entering its 24th year and firmly established as one of the BIGGEST and BEST attended public exhibitions in Northern Ireland

Featuring: • • • • • •

Fashion & Beauty Food & Drink Genealogy Government Information Services Health & Wellbeing Holidays & Travel

• • • •

Home & Garden Hotels & Spas Personal Finance & Law Retirement Villages & Resorts • Technology

WHY YOU SHOULD EXHIBIT AT THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH 50+VILLAGE • Estimated 80% of the country’s wealth is held by people aged 50+ (The Henley Centre) • 31.7% (or 574,000) of the Northern Ireland population are 50+ (Northern Ireland population census) • 62% of Belfast Telegraph readers are 50+ • As a group they are more likely to have substantial assets, cash and the time to enjoy life.

Whilst they are less likely to have any mortgages, school fees and 9 to 5 jobs.

To exhibit please contact Maureen Ledwith Sales Director +353 (0)1 291 3700 e: maureen@bizex.ie

Paulette Moran Sales Manager +353 (0)1 291 3702 e: paulette@bizex.ie