SPAA president Alan Glen branded heavy discounting “the plague of the industry” during a speech at the association’s annual dinner.
He explained that a desire to “talk some sense into the travel industry” was part of the reason he joined the Scottish Passenger Agents’ Association, and agreed to take on the presidency in 2015.
He said he was approached “a few years back during a prolonged period of heavy discounting in the retail travel trade” and invited to take part in a discount voucher scheme.
Despite the firm managing to get Glen’s company, Glen Travel, “in front of half a million potential new clients”, such was the level of online and retail discounting at the time that his team “ended up with two years of grief and heartache”.
“Trying to explain to the client that the price they had was already discounted was a nightmare,” he said.
“It did teach me a valuable lesson though – never go chasing that kind of price-led business.”
He described the trend to “base the product purely on price” as “the race to the bottom – the plague of the travel industry”.
Glen went on to appeal to airlines, stating that agents were “not the enemy”. “When you’re dealing with the internet you’ve often got no idea who you are dealing with or who’s ultimately providing the product or what country it’s being transacted in,” he said.
Glen explained to TTG that firms selling at just over cost or under cost were generally “taking a risk”.