VENICE, Italy -- Arthur Tauck sells to Woopies. Terry Jones
recommends a career in wholetailing. And hotelier Steve Richard is
more interested in RevPAC than RevPAR.
The new lexicon of travel was echoing in the halls during the
2003 AAA Travel Conference here last week.
Delegates were addressed by prognosticators, trend-followers and
experts representing a wide range of the industry, as well as their
own leaders, who unveiled new technology aimed at putting the
organization back on track for consumer Internet sales.
Tauck, chairman of Tauck World Discovery, defined Woopies as
Well Off Older People. "They're also the people who used to say 'I
wouldn't be caught dead on a motorcoach tour'" but are now filling
his buses.
The baby boomers are aging and swelling the ranks of Woopies,
and Tauck urged delegates to understand this market segment.
"Woopies don't like add-ons, and prefer that everything offered be
in the package price," he said. "The more we include, the happier
they are."
A wholetailer is a retailer who creates his own packages and
sells them directly to consumers, according to Terry Jones, the
founding CEO of Travelocity and current principal in the consulting
firm Essential Ideas. But be careful how you present your
offerings, he warned. "People don't click on a tab labeled
'packages.' Call them 'vacations.' "
And Steve Richard, vice president of alliance account sales for
Marriott International, said RevPAR (revenue per available room)
was becoming a secondary consideration to RevPAC (revenue per
available customer). "The question is, 'Who's the most profitable
person I can put in a given room?' as determined by CRM
technology," he said.
Technology -- and the Internet in particular -- was the
unofficial focus of the conference, and AAA leaders acknowledged
the organization had some catching up to do. A consumer
cruise-booking tool in beta-testing was unveiled, and AAA's
managing director of travel technology, Lee Granger, said it will
be offered to all the clubs by year's end.
"We won't get outflanked by suppliers like we did with air,"
executive vice president for association and club services Mark
Brown said later. "This is a state-of-the-art interface, with live
inventory."
Granger said future projects would improve airfare pricing and
search capability, provide tours with dynamic packaging and create
software to help agencies evaluate their financial performance.
Vice president for travel services Sandra Hughes said the
association was also developing integrated hotel search
functionality among supplier sites, the GDSs, hotel-owned supersite
Travelweb and inventory supplied by Americantours International,
all sorted by price.
AAA's contract with Galileo, its preferred GDS, will be up next
year, and though a renewal has not been signed, both AAA and
Galileo representatives present were very complimentary about the
existing relationship.
The setting in Venice led a few speakers to compare the city's
problems -- it is sinking -- with those of the travel industry, and
warned that action must be taken to avoid catastrophe. Another
analogy might have been made between Italy in its youth and AAA --
both comprising scores of semi-autonomous units.
The only attendee who commented aloud on AAA's unique structure
was Fabrice Morel, president of RailEurope/DER/Avanti. He said he
had been told to be "brutally honest" in his address to
delegates.
"Your diversity is a source of strength, but it can be
bewildering for a supplier," he said. "There is a great disparity
in how proactive [individual clubs are] and in their readiness to
push products. I think you are not leveraging your brand strength
as well as if you were using a more cohesive approach."
It was a rare moment of controversy in a generally harmonious
conclave. After AAA president and CEO Robert Darbelnet addressed
the crowd, he asked if there were any questions.
There were none.
To contact Editor-in-Chief Arnie Weissmann, send e-mail to
[email protected].