TRAVEL

“In corporate, we cannot margin. However, we can charge service fees, but the levels are so low that we cannot earn a living.

Then the suppliers’ commissions, we receive them at the end of the year, so we have to wait.

On this activity, we are reaching balance, albeit barely. The leisure side allows us to recover margin, around 10%, and the events side even more, around 25 to 30%, with higher margins“, continued Solenn Le Brazidec, the managing director of the agency.

A finding that seems to hold for mid-sized corporate agencies. The big players in the market, such as Amplitudes and others, manage to stand out thanks to their own technological solutions and volumes.

To improve this situation and generate margin, in order to keep teams in business travel, the leadership of Plus Voyages decided to launch a new brand in… leisure.

Legends of Africa offers tailor-made stays on the African continent, a way to generate added value. But the exercise is not always so straightforward.

Because, to exist, the new entity relies on online client acquisition, a process that comes with a cost and not only benefits.

For Éric Baetens, it’s time for the sector to assert itself and not be ashamed of making money.

“When I started, I turned to bespoke travel, because it is difficult to compare offers. The client has no reference point with other agencies. Standardized products will always be hard to margin.

After, regarding the margin to apply, at first I was at 13%, then, after the Covid period, I decided to raise it to 17%, due to costs and other factors. At the same time, Voyageurs du Monde achieves a margin of around 30%.

I didn’t tell my clients anything, these four points are almost painless for them. Except that this increase generated 30% more revenue. It allowed me to fund my accreditations, to pay the freelancer who handles these files.

The main hurdle is psychological; it is in our heads, us, the travel agents“, the travel agent confides, who also acknowledges that his case is specific because he is alone, without overhead or client acquisition costs.

By the way, according to Enterprises of the Voyage, new entrants who register do not come to compete with Booking or Airbnb, nor to impose a new technology.

They often rely on niches to develop their activity, thus benefiting from community involvement and effective word-of-mouth.

If the question of value is an eternal one, artificial intelligence comes to challenge the certainties that the web took thirty years to impose. In the corporate sector, this revolution is raising questions.

“In my view, AI is simply the continuation of SBT. At the time, we were already wondering about the impact on humans, and, let’s be honest, it is enormous. AI will have an impact on humans. With the implementation of Wondermiles, we reduced staffing needs by 35%.

In tourism, AI will help us gain productivity, because people always want to speak to a human and need someone to talk to on the phone or via video. Then trust remains paramount“, reassures Solenn Le Brazidec, the associate managing director of Plus Voyages.