Magellan providing "distribution diversity"
Magellan Travel Group has reiterated its intention to cap membership at 100 agents as management stressed the need to remain a “high performance” network.
Chairman and joint founding member Andrew Jones said while it did not want to be “elitist”, it would be selective and effectively become a “closed shop” when its membership targets were hit.
Since its launch in 2008, the group had provided "distribution diversity" for suppliers, general manager Andrew Macfarlane added.
Addressing an event in Sydney last night to mark Magellan’s fifth anniversary, Jones, owner of Tasmania-based Andrew Jones Travel, said it had no desire to continually expand.
“I guess we really want to be a 100 member group, plus the additional outlets,” he told suppliers. “We don’t aspire to be 400 or 500 or a 300 agency group. We want to have a group of 100 quality agents that add extreme value to you guys.
“We have about 20 or 25 to go and we look forward to attracting those agents in the next couple of years.
“We don’t want to be seen to be elitist but we don’t want to be all things to all people and our model will not change.”
Macfarlane said its 70 “high end leisure and boutique corporate members” generate transaction value worth half a billion dollars.
Furthermore, he described its agents as “low maintenance”.
“It may be a funny thing to say but they all know what they are doing. They are experienced travel agents and they deliver revenue without being too service intensive for our preferred suppliers,” he said.
“That has been a deliberate strategy. We are building a high performance group and we want a small number of large agents rather than a large number of small agents .”
Macfarlane said the transparency of its deals and its “key objective” of improving the profitability of its members was among its “guiding principles”.
With no shareholders to generate a dividend for, all decisions are based on whether its members will benefit, he said.
“When you pay an incentive you want to know those performance incentives will be transparently known by our membership and will get to them,” Macfarlane told preferred partners at last night's event.
In addition, once deals are negotiated and the benefits of those deals “transparently communicated” to members “we get out of the way and let you engage directly with our agents”, he said.
Macfarlane added that the creation of Magellan had satisfied the desire of suppliers to have a range of distribution partners. Industry consolidation had been a “concern to many” and the emergence of Magellan had helped create “distribution diversity, he said.
Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au
agents andrew jones andrew macfarlane magellan magellan travel group retailersLatest News
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