Making 0% work for you

WHAT THE AGENTS SAID:

Nasheen Ali, business travel consultant, Al Naboodah Travel and Tourism:

The seminar was very good - nowadays all passengers can buy from the internet, but every agency must make a profit, so we have to be able to justify charging a fee.

We don't normally charge for the services that we have always given for free. We used to get the 7% but now since we are providing more services and spending more time on each transaction and finding specialist packages, we must charge.

Rizwan AbooBacker, business travel consultant, Al Naboodah Travel and Tourism:

If you provide a good service, customers are happy, but still there are certain things we can't do for them. If there are certain restriction on flights - changing or cancelling them - that is beyond our power, but as a travel consultant we do whatever we can to help 24/7. If a customer is running late and it is likely he will miss the flight we will book him on the next available flight - with the internet you can't do this, so we offer greater value.

If you give a good service to the client they will come back, even if there is an extra charge.

When the airlines said they were going to zero, sometimes you thought what is the use of sitting here? But some of the ideas we discussed here were really good - like having agency fee cards. If all the agencies start together then the customer won't have any option. Zero percent commission is currently a negative for us but we have to make it a positive.

Fazly Askin, travel consultant, Al Naboodah Travel and Tourism:

The most useful part of the seminar was getting to know how to answer the customers when they ask why we are charging a service fee. Certain customers don't trust the fee unless they understand why we are adding it.

I am based in Ajman - most of the customers there don't want to pay more, so it's tough to deal with certain customers. Everyone is getting used to using the internet for bookings very well, so we have to offer better service to compete.

Riyazuddin Mubarak, branch manager, Alta Al Ghaith & Al Moosa Travel Agency:

Based on what we discussed at the seminar, agencies should train their front line staff to higher levels - that is the most important thing. The most important thing I took from today was to make sure that all staff understand what it is we are offering to customers that adds value, and that this value should not be delivered for free.

We should charge something for our services and it should be genuine. We are not going to charge for something that has no relevance.

So we should evaluate our service and charge accordingly. We should also convince the customer that they are paying for something that adds value to their demands or needs.