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Impact Consultants : « the consolidation is one of the big CHALLENGES in business travel » The interview of Rodolphe Lenoir, co-founder of Impact Consultants by TourMag Artificial intelligence (AI), NDC, employment, the Olympic Games… What changes will the tourism industry undergo? Rodolphe Lenoir, co-founder of Impact Consultants, provides some answers. “The important thing for companies is to have a plan, the ability to adapt, and options for diversification. It’s about being agile enough to seize opportunities,” says Rodolphe Lenoir, co-founder of Impact Consultants. TourMaG.com –  Who is Impact consultants ?   Impact Consultants is a leading consulting firm in the travel sector in general: leisure and business tourism, transportation, mobility, hospitality, travel tech, amusement parks, and more. We also work in the healthcare sector. We have been in business for just over three years. The firm currently has 15 employees, including one in Monaco and another in London, to serve our clients in France and abroad. Our focus is on growth. We support companies in their growth plans, from strategy to operations. Translated with DeepL.com (free version) TourMaG.com – You are one of the co-founders and have extensive experience in the tourism industry.   This is another unique feature of our firm: the entire team has worked in the industry. Personally, I have over 25 years of experience in the tourism industry. I worked for 15 years at Air France, three years at CWT, and another three years at the Marseille-based hotel chain Vacances Bleues. This gives me a fairly comprehensive overview, although no one has ever covered the entire sector. TourMaG.com – How has Covid impacted the tourism industry?   COVID has accelerated certain transformations, such as CSR, even if things have calmed down a bit recently. The industry is very cyclical. I come from the airline industry. Every three years at Air France, we went through a crisis. The important thing for companies is to have a plan, the ability to adapt, and options for diversification. It’s about being agile enough to seize opportunities. I think Covid has reinforced that. TourMaG.com – What is your view of the tourism industry today? It’s a sector that is constantly changing. If I take the example of the internet, the first industry to be disrupted by the internet was tourism. At the time, people were predicting the death of travel agencies. Today, there are still more than 4,000 in France. And there are some great agencies, new concepts, including offline agencies. Today, there is a topic that is AI. Indeed, AI is going to disrupt many things, including travel. There is inevitably a major issue on which the industry needs to reinvent itself. Tourism is capable of adapting. I was at the Travel Pioneers Forum, where I saw once again that people are passionate about their work. There is a real passion for customers, for the sector, and for the products. Tourism is also an industry with an extremely complex distribution ecosystem. Today in France, it is an industry that needs to continue to ask questions and reinvent itself. And we can still feel certain obstacles. TourMaG.com – You talk about reinventing oneself. In what direction should the industry go? There are several issues. We need to reinvent ourselves or evolve, but there is also the issue of teams: How can we attract the next generation to the profession? How can we retain them? How can we motivate them? It is precisely the ability to give opportunities to less technical employees. For example, in the past, it took weeks and weeks of IATA training to issue a ticket. Today, with NDC and the UX available, we can train people in two days. We are moving from an industry of technicians to an industry that must recognize that, although there is a lot of technology behind it, the people on the front line are more human, more empathetic. There is a second challenge that is permanent in the industry, and that is technology. France is lagging behind America and Spain when it comes to NDC. Agencies are a real hindrance, even though NDC opens up a whole range of possibilities, despite not being perfect today. Agencies need to reinvent their business model, the way they work, and the tools they use. Agencies haven’t realized this yet. Third topic: market consolidation. In business travel, for example, there has been significant consolidation with the acquisition of CWT by Amex GBT, but at the same time, there are new players, such as Navan and Supertripper in France. Technology creates opportunities. The consolidation of Amex with Egencia and CWT also creates space for small agencies. TourMaG.com – Still on the topic of technology, how is the industry responding to AI? There are several scenarios. Some people want to go for it and try things out. As with all changes, you have to embrace it and see it as an opportunity. In my field, consulting, AI is major, because one of our jobs is to do research for our clients, benchmark, and bring in methods. You can either look at it and think it’s terrible for consulting, that we won’t be able to hire juniors tomorrow. We think it saves us time, so we can do other things and do them better. It needs to be seen as an opportunity. That’s the point. TourMaG.com – To what extent can we talk about opportunity? In distribution, could AI help solve recruitment difficulties, for example? AI will generate productivity gains, that’s for sure. But as an agency, I ask myself: how can I recruit? What can I do to recruit the profiles I’m looking for and offer a better service to my clients? Rather than doing repetitive tasks that don’t add value for my clients. The first itinerary can be created on ChatGPT. On the front office side, when it comes to creating trips, AI can fuel new ideas, free up more time for human interaction, etc. With AI, we maintain this notion of service that responds to the tourism

Interview with Franck Demortière, Sales Director at Digitrips Can you tell us more about the history of DIGITRIPS ?  To understand the history of Digitrips, it’s important to remember that it’s first and foremost an amalgamation of skills, knowledge and know-how. At the outset, several structures coexisted: Misterfly, H-Résa, Koedia… These names may ring a bell, but they are the entities that formed the basis of what became Digitrips. It was their teams, their expertise and their collective energy that gradually shaped the project. A decisive turning point came with the arrival of Émilie Dumont. She really structured the group, giving a guideline to the various existing “houses”. She played the role of architect and project manager, ensuring the emergence of a common identity – a unified brand. It was in this convergence that Digitrips was consolidated. The group has structured itself around a multi-product, multi-channel offering, designed to meet the needs of a wide variety of customers: travel agencies, TMCs, works councils, major e-retailers like Cdiscount, and even airports… Today, these customers can be found in France, Belgium, Italy and tomorrow beyond. International development is based on the same fundamentals as in France, but with a finer selection of products, in order to give priority to those that are most adaptable and competitive on a global scale. In particular, we focus on the dynamic package, i.e. a combination of hotel, car and transfers. Yes, some of these products are already well represented on the market. But our growth in France shows that there is still room for challengers, especially when you know how to differentiate yourself. As far as dynamic packages are concerned, we are clearly positioned in the city-break and short-stay segments. Our specialty is urban short breaks, a segment that has been largely under-exploited in recent years, particularly by tour operators. There’s a real opportunity to be seized here, as demonstrated by our success in the e-package segment. We are currently in the launch phase for the train product, particularly for European City Breaks. This is a real business skill, which we are developing both on a B2B and white-label basis, including abroad. It’s part of our drive to target a wide range of partners, including e-tailers, banks, insurers, airlines and airports How is Digitrips’ sales organization structured, do you already have an international footprint ?    Our sales organization is structured by market and customer segment, not by product. Today, we have B2B teams in France, Belgium and Italy. These three zones are organized in much the same way: they cover travel agencies, agency networks, tour operators, TMCs…. These are the three main types of customer we serve. Tomorrow, we will be structuring an international development division, which will take charge of Italy and support the opening up of new markets. This division will also be responsible for building “reciprocal” contracts with other players in the sector – in other words, two-way partnerships involving the exchange of services or customer portfolios. What led you to collaborate with IMPACT CONSULTANTS ?   The decision to call on Impact Consultants wasn’t originally mine – it came from Émilie Dumont. But I can certainly explain why the choice was made. At the time, we were clearly lacking in-house: we were short of manpower, brains and skills. Impact Consultants seemed to us the most appropriate solution to meet this need, with a real knowledge of the markets and the assignments to be carried out. Then, as we worked together on the SalesFactory project, we discovered that this collaboration enabled us to go even further. It brought to light a need that had not been identified at the outset: that of creating a Sales Operations position in particular. This position didn’t yet exist in our organization. Océane Recorbet is temporarily filling this role, until we are able to recruit the right person to fill it on a permanent basis. An interview by Océane Recorbet Partagez cette page

Distribution, a strategic lever in travel ? Why is distribution a key strategic lever in the travel sector? In many organizations in the travel sector (transport, hotels, parks, etc.), distribution is still too often relegated to the background. Dedicated positions are rare, distribution policies are vague or absent, and performance by channel is not sufficiently monitored. Yet distribution is an essential link between supply and demand. It links marketing, revenue management (RMP), technology and, of course, sales. Here are 5 key reasons to proactively and strategically manage your distribution: 1. Distribution is a marketing showcase Distribution, whether direct or indirect, is the first showcase for your products and services. While content is often well mastered in direct channels, this is not always the case in indirect channels. In the airline industry, for example, GDS flows (via EDIFACT) do not allow for « on-the-fly » personalization, hence the emergence of XML-based NDC. In all sectors, the quality of descriptions, visuals and highlights requires constant attention, even with the help of tools like channel managers. 2. Distribution costs are significant Distribution costs can account for up to 20% of sales. In hotels, Booking’s average commission is 15%. In the airline sector, although the basic commission is often zero, costs linked to GDSs, NDC aggregators, incentives or in-house staff can quickly push the bill up to 10%. What’s more, the costs of direct distribution (advertising, IT, staff, physical agencies, etc.) are often underestimated, or even higher than those of indirect distribution. Direct sales offer advantages such as customer loyalty and knowledge, but they are not always the most profitable. 3. The right distribution mix optimizes sales Commercial success depends on a complementary distribution strategy. A policy that favors direct sales is logical, but it cannot cover all segments. A well-structured third-party distribution network (Tour-Operating, specific sales such as seafarers in the airline industry, etc.) can generate incremental sales without cannibalization. The important thing is to have a segmented, animated and well-managed approach. 4. Distributors are a valuable source of inspiration Distributors are often experts in their field. They understand customer expectations, user experience and technological innovations. In the hotel industry, for example, taking inspiration from Booking’s best practices can considerably improve the performance of your own site. Their expertise is an asset for all departments: marketing, tech, customer service… 5. Distribution is at the heart of technological choices The mapping of distribution tools in the travel sector resembles a complex spider’s web. Choosing the right technologies is fundamental to controlling content, costs and the customer experience. With the arrival of AI, new channels are emerging (such as conversational agents). This means we need to review our technological architecture, making it scalable and customer-oriented. How can you regain control of your distribution? To optimize your distribution strategy, here are the key steps: Draw up a clear distribution policy and share it internally Monitor costs and revenues via channel-specific dashboards Define roles and responsibilities internally Build solid, high-performance partnerships Implement a scalable technological architecture Animate, control and monitor each distribution network in real time At IMPACT CONSULTANTS, we have developed tried-and-tested methodologies to help travel industry players move towards more efficient, agile and controlled distribution. Our main piece of advice: don’t be subjected to your distribution, drive it! An article wrote by Rodolphe Lenoir Discover our associate Partagez cette page