Amadeus Magazine

A successful year - 2006

By Janchrister Egnefors

The current year will soon draw to a close, and overall we can note that 2006 has been a successful time for the travel industry. Many have turned red figures to black, and a number of new players have arrived on the scene.

During three days in November, we assembled suppliers and customers in Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen to focus on how we in the sector can do even better business in the future. More than 200 people listened to the guest-speakers Per Arne Villadsen from Berg-Hansen Reisebureau, Morten Torp from GO AS and Hernán Goyanes from Hermes Management Consulting – all of whom presented various solutions and advice for more effective and successful business.

Hernán Goyanes from Hermes Management Consulting presented a completely new report about how travel agencies can become more profitable. The report is based on a survey performed in several markets across the world, and which gratifyingly shows that the results of Scandinavian travel agencies are at the top of the scale regarding profitability. Despite this situation, there nonetheless remains a lot to do – the gap between the most profitable and least profitable agencies is still considerable. Two ways to better profitability are to centralise customer services and improve our tools for Internet sales. If you would like to learn more about how to achieve better profitability in your business, please read our summary article here in Amadeus Magazine, or order the entire report at www.amadeus.com/showmethevalue_sca

Scandinavian companies spend a total of SEK 55 billion a year on business travel – which is an enormous amount of money. But with the help of user-friendly self-booking systems, travel agencies can increase efficiency and companies can reduce their travel costs. In this issue of Amadeus Magazine, you can read about Amadeus’ completely upgraded self-booking system – e-Travel Management 10.0 – which enables companies to make their own travel reservations themselves. One of the new features allows the traveller to compare both one-way and return tickets, thus allowing them to use different airlines for their outgoing and homeward-bound journeys.

I am looking forward very much to a successful 2007, and for us to do even better business together.

To close, I wish you pleasant reading and a very Happy New Year!

Janchrister Egnefors