Airline earlybirds the “litmus" test
The airline earlybird campaign will be the “litmus test” for the industry over the next three months in a market that remains unpredictable and erratic, according to Travellers Choice.
The retailer’s chief executive Christian Hunter said deals launched this week to stimulate business will go some way to assessing what sort of year the industry will have.
But predicting the outcome and forecasting with any accuracy in such a volatile environment is “really difficult to call”, he said.
“Maintaining a positive exchange rate, while not helping the domestic operators, will be good for us,” he told Travel Today. “We’re also now coming into earlybird season and there will be a lot of activity in the coming weeks and months with deals to stimulate business. That will be a real litmus test as to how responsive the market will be. It will be a good indicator as to what we can expect in the year ahead.”
While hard to forecast, he suggested the market was unlikely to see material change with Travellers Choice adopting the “mindset that it’s the status quo for a period of time”.
Speaking after Travellers Choice posted a 38% decline in pre-tax profits to $727,000 (Travel Today, yesterday), Hunter said the network was striving for growth in 2012/13.
“If you ask me would I be disappointed if we return that again? Probably not,” Hunter said. “But if the market moves then we should be able to better that.”
He insisted the result should also been seen in the context of the previous year, a record result for Travellers Choice.
“It was not as bad a result as it may indicate,” Hunter said. “We had a record year last year and were in line or even slightly ahead of 2009/10.”
In such a competitive environment, it was vital that head office and agents were smart with their marketing. Agents most valuable asset is their database, he said.
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