Protect Group, a company that offers ancillary travel products, has introduced an Agent Platform for travel advisors to sell refund protection to their clients.
The company described the opportunity as a new revenue stream for travel advisors, paying as much as 40% commission.
Travel advisors can use the web-based tool to add Protect
Group's Refund Protect services to clients' itineraries. A travel agency
will have its own account with Protect Group, and individual
advisors will have their own accounts within the travel agency account.
Stephen Joyce, Protect Group's global lead for travel, tourism and OTAs, said the company already has a number of clients with "significant offline business," but up until now, his company could only serve their online business.
"By creating the agent platform, now we can capture all of their business," Joyce said.
How it works
All the work can be completed in an Internet browser. Whenever advisors have an itinerary created, they can use that information to create a quote to protect that booking based on its total value. Joyce said the amount varies by itinerary and a number of other factors, but generally, protection is about 10% of an itinerary.
Quotes, which stay active for 72 hours, can then be sent to clients for approval.
Once the sale is complete, a unique link is generated for clients to use if they need to request a refund. Via the refund portal, clients can complete the refund request process.
Cancellation reasons that are covered include things like illness or injury, a home emergency, flight disruption and more. A full list is available online.
Requests are first examined by AI. Joyce said about 70% are approved instantly, and money is sent to their bank account within four hours. The remainder of requests are reviewed by humans, and most get a response within 48 hours.
If a request is approved, travel advisors retain 100% of their commission from the booking. The consumer gets 100% of their trip cost back plus the fee they paid to Protect Group (so if the basket value of a trip was $1,000 and the fee to protect it was $100, Joyce said, they would get $1,100 back).
Up to 40% commission
Protect Group pays 40% commission. That can be split up by a company, Joyce said; for instance, if a company owns multiple agencies, it might keep 5% for the company and 5% for the travel agency, with 30% going to the travel advisor.
"We want to make it attractive for the advisors to sell," Joyce said. "They're commission-based, so we know they're motivated by that. If that's something we can really promote with them and gets them excited, then they will sell, and that's good for everybody."
Joyce said that Refund Protect is not travel insurance. For Jason Sarracini, founder and CEO of the agency Landsby in Toronto, that is a selling point.
"It functions as a contractual booking-protection service," Sarracini said. "This means advisors can offer enhanced refund flexibility to clients without dealing with the licensing requirements or regulatory complexity."
It's particularly attractive to advisors who serve a global client base, he said, as it offers refund protection to clients regardless of where they live or where their trip originates.
Landsby is Protect Group's beta partner for the Agent Platform, testing it in the month of December. Joyce said the company plans to start onboarding new partners in January.