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TTI forum (London) - 19th June - SMEs gaining the advantage

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

The TTI (Travel Technology Initiative), the UK based organisation that defines industry standards for various travel XML data formats has an interesting conference / forum on the 19th June taking place in London.

“SMEs gaining the advantage”. (An SME is a small or medium sized business - normally one with less than 100-200 staff).

The conference blurb says:

“Small and medium enterprises may believe, in this age of technological automation and online sales, that it is becoming impossible to compete with the “big boys”.

“After all, squeezing maximum profits out of the relatively low margins achieved within the travel industry is far easier with high sales volumes, making the advanced technology needed to run highly efficient operations more affordable”.

I think they have missed the point that you can be equally profitable running a high margin, highly personal and customer focussed, low volume travel company. Not everyone wants to be factory - many are happy being artisans. This is particularly true of the “micro” tour operator - one with less than 20 staff.

Anyway, looks a good forum - and I will be there.

 


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This blog is about travel ecommerce with a focus on topics of interest to tour operators & travel companies

Alex has previously started up a small tour operator (5 staff) and also worked for leading "dot coms", airlines, hotel chains and tour operators advising and project managing web, ecommerce and reservation system projects.

Alex is available for travel ecommerce consulting via Travel UCD. Travel UCD also operates TourCMS - a web based reservation system for small tour operators

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