2009-01-18

Industry Needs to be Customer not Commission Focused

Industry Needs to be Customer not Commission Focused Surveying the Indian Retail Landscape: Mistaking the Tree for a Forest In the last two months, the Indian travel industry has witnessed growing friction between the large flag carriers and travel agencies. The bone of contention has been commissions, which are rapidly disappearing as a source of revenue. Ram Badrinathan, general manager, Asia Pacific, at PhoCusWright offers his perspective on this controversy. The battle began in November 2008, after Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines rescinded the unpopular transaction fee charged for booking directly on their Web sites. The removal of the transaction fee coupled with the elimination of travel agency commissions rocked the industry just as it has in market after market across the world. Unsurprisingly, trade associations in an otherwise fragmented travel agency community united in protest. As a result, Jet Airways and Kingfisher introduced a 3% commission structure on domestic...

This post was originally posted by phocuswright @ PhoCusWright's FYI.
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