TETRENDS final project

“Mabuhay! Welcome to Trends airline, my name is Helen, your flight attendant for flight 84B
with service from Manila to Taipei. Captain Sandoval is in command assisting him is First
Officer Vergara. Our flight to Taipei will take about 2 hours and 15 minutes.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, while we wait for take-off, please take a moment to watch and listen to
the cabin crew discussing about one of the current trends in the tourism and hospitality industry,
the electronic travel agents or also known as online travel agents or OTAs.
-------VIDEO-------
Good afternoon passengers, do you know that an online travel agency, or OTA, is a website or
online service, which sells travel-related products to customers. These products may include
hotels, flights, travel packages, activities and car rentals. Crucially, OTAs are third parties,
reselling these services on behalf of other companies, including those in the hotel industry.
Now what are the advantages of online travel agents:

 a low-cost way to list your property and its rooms.

 Reductions in your online marketing spend. OTAs will invest in marketing and
advertising to attract potential international customers.
 A reduction in your website costs. OTAs are keen to provide a positive online experience
for customers through good website design and functionality.

There may be also be some disadvantages in using online travel agents.

 Online travel agents can charge commission on every sale. This can range between 10-
20 per cent of the gross cost.
 There may be restrictive terms and conditions imposed by OTAs such as guest
cancellation and automatic room reselling policies.
 You may need to find a way of managing room availability across a range of OTAs, your
own website, front desk and telephone sales. This can be time consuming and labour
intensive. There are software options to help you manage this.

Although online travel agents can help you fill rooms, it is important to maximize your most
profitable revenues through sales on your own website. You should continually work on your
search engine optimization tactics and other digital marketing techniques. Focus on customer
retention tactics. Directly target your existing customers through email and direct marketing. A
travel website is a website that provides travel reviews, trip fares, or a combination of both. Over
1.5 billion people book travel per year, 70% of which is done online.
So that’s it, thank you for watching. We will now be taking off shortly,