Amit Singh joined Fareportal as president last August after his stint as CFO of Latin American online travel company Despegar. Fareportal sits at No. 15 on Travel Weekly's Power List with 2024 sales of $3 billion. Editor Jamie Biesiada spoke with Singh about his focus on expanding Fareportal's inventory, B2B offerings and the company's opportunities with travel agencies.
Amit Singh
Q: What's your time with Fareportal been like so far?
A: One of the reasons I joined Fareportal after Despegar was because I saw the type of opportunities that this company has. Fareportal has primarily been an air supplier. We are an OTA which focuses primarily on value-focused air, where we are able to provide very strong value propositions to our customers with a full focus on transparency and a lot of hand holding through our contact center, which a lot of our peers don't do. We are able to be the type of company which can provide strong value and a lot of technology for solutions but at the same time provide a human touch, which is sort of missing in this industry.
Since I have joined, one of the big focuses has been while we continue to solidify our strength in technology, at the same time expand our offerings in products like hotels and cars and also expand our presence in B2B. While we are growing our air side, we are very aggressively focused on the hotels, cars and B2B business. Which, to me, was one of the attractive points of joining Fareportal, because this is a massive opportunity in front of us. We are just getting started in a lot of these places.
Q: You're focused on hotels and cars now. What comes next?
A: In the future, we could add other things, as well, like experiences, cruises and all of that. So everything is in the pipeline. Not everything is coming tomorrow or next month, but all these things are in the pipeline.
Q: Can you tell me more about your ambitions in the B2B space?
A: We can break B2B into two parts. One is we provide our inventory and technology to travel agencies for them to ultimately sell to consumers. We already have businesses in Canada under Royal Scenic and in the U.S. under FareBuzz, in Mexico under ConsoTravel, in the U.K. under Dukes Court Travel. So that's one side of the business. Currently over there, we are running a very strong consolidated growth strategy of expanding within North America. You should see in the coming months, years, strong expansion in that business.
The other side of our B2B is white-label solutions. Think of any bank or retailer that wants to build its own travel platform for its own customers or employees. Obviously, the banks and retailers don't build their own suppliers and all, so they use our white-label solution to be able to provide that air, hotel, car and all the various travel products to their end users. We provide the technology, we provide the supply, it's just white-labeled and they can have their brand on it. In the coming months and years, you should see us strongly expanding on that side.
Q: On the agency front, do you see Fareportal working with larger agencies, or do you envision having a kind of Expedia Travel Agent Affiliate Program situation where any travel advisor can come in and book via Fareportal?
A: We will be fully open. Even at this time, we have thousands of agencies that we work with, and they are different sizes. Obviously, I think there is some more opportunity for us in smaller agencies if I'm properly trying to place our company in terms of competitive strength. But we will be very open to the type of agencies we will be working with. When it comes to white label, there might be more opportunity for us to work with small and midcap banks, retailers and other clients.