How is the search for package tours in a country where people do not really trust credit cards?

Double standard in Sochi at the Hotel Bridge Mountain costs 86 rubles per person per day for April 1-6, and can be taken separately from the tour for 860 rubles for 5 nights

5 years ago we discovered that “Bucking” is selling hotels, all kinds of “SkyScanners” and AWAD are air tickets, and AB & B is raising its head. But no one sells tours entirely. I then told my friend: “Man, let's sell tours. It's very easy to do! ”

And then such circles of hell began, that we cursed that day several times. It all started with a fairly simple task - synchronizing tours and finding them. But the joke was that if the tour operator was looking for us only from the offices with our hands, then with our search comparisons (about 500-600 tours go up in one request to “Travelati” in general), we simply put their servers to Edren Fen. And the tours were not. In general, reservation systems were made in the 90s, and some ticket reservation systems drag Legacy almost from the time of the telegraph.
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Then we were faced with the fact that people outside Moscow just do not trust credit cards. Then - with the fact that some tour operators are very fond of, let's say, keep back the price when ordering. And so on.

Theory 1: you can sell any tours (true)

In 2011, we launched the service, knowing full well that our people used to buy long tours in offices, feeling for different parts of the body of a real physical travel agent. Therefore, the idea was simple: weekend tours. According to them, the decision is made quickly (in a week), they are easy to sell (they are cheap, the risks for the buyer are conditionally reduced), very few people sold them. More precisely, as: we thought that if there is no demand, then we will be the first and get rich. Not. On a daily basis, such tours turned out to be more expensive than usual, and the main audience was office staff. By the way, iron guarantees of a charter with a return strictly on Monday morning, too, no one could give.

We have not sold a single tour in a month.

But when, almost by chance, ordinary tours were picked up from the base, they began to be sold. And the most popular: Turkey, Egypt, Greece. This made us extremely surprised.

Theory 2: everything can be solved through the network (incorrect)

It turned out that about 30% of our customers even today (when, it would seem, everyone is used to Uber, Bucking, and other services) really want to talk to a living person. Today we have a contact center in Volgograd (because it turned out to be a million people with no normal jobs) for 90–150 (depending on the season) employees. And we are considered a major employer for Moscow’s ridiculous turnover.

Many people do not have enough information about the tour, and questions arise anywhere, starting from a visa and ending with a specific view from the room. On average, the price of a tour bought through us is about 60–70 thousand, and this is far from a penny. People want to know everything, and most often - to hear someone calm voice on the other end. At the travel agent's office, all this is there, not on the net.

As one of our clients said, “I’ll see a manager, I’ll kill you on occasion."

In general, first for the Volgograd contact center, we hired experts on tourism (the ones that were in the offices of regional companies). The selection was about one to twenty, and then they ran out. It turned out that it is harder to talk with people than to know the nuances of a tour operator. And we began to recruit just good people and teach them how to get data from different databases.

At the beginning of work about 95% was eager to communicate, now - about 30%.

Theory 3: Without knowing us, no one will buy on the card (fortunately, wrong)

Thought to open an office with consultants, but, oddly enough, it was not needed. People did not know us. We did not have a brand known at that time, and yet people were ready to buy on the card, not knowing anything about us at all. And this is due to the fact that they trusted us. Today it’s already 100% paid by cards.

True, of course, some came to make sure that we are not a Sharashkin office, to an office on Tverskaya, where the team sits (in particular, accounting). There we took cash.

Especially for paranoids, I note that the office itself proves little, but the presence of bank acquiring is serious. To get this permission, you need to provide so much documentation that you can go a little crazy.

Theory 4: Customers take care of their own visas (mostly true)

It was assumed that we would make visas for buyers of tours, or help with a set of documents and other details. In practice, 70% of buyers either come with a visa, or do not raise this issue at all, and about half the rest take the list of documents from the site and quietly receive the visas themselves. The only thing for the tours is still often need a visa service: many have found it very convenient to take the courier, give him the documents, then get the passports with visas before the trip, also from the courier.

In general, if the client does not have a visa, then we give such a service (in the form of DIY instructions or a courier with passports and all the difficulties).

Theory 5: Search can be done quickly (incorrect)

As I said, the problem is that the reservation systems were outdated. But what's really there, even the airline reservation systems are mostly in this condition until now, but at least they have a common GDS. There are no common standards on tours, nothing. Until 2011, it was necessary to parse HTML stupidly, and they considered this the norm. Sometimes, in order to book at least something, you need to integrate tightly, often portraying the office and almost reversing the protocol of a standard client. Most of the small tour operators, we just put a standard search - they have to make a cache, which causes problems when fading. Those whom we cannot index with a sufficiently small pause, simply disconnect from the system.

Then we noticed that some operators began to “correct lags” - they began to give the top 10–20 tours in response to frequent requests (without the rest). This, of course, was not enough for us.

On average, we take 500–600 tours to the request, and at the same time we do our best not to put the server in and not to get banned. There is a problem with the fact that the tour operator system takes a long time to respond to the request (response is long), and the people on the site after waiting 30-40 seconds. pulled close the search box. This problem is solved by a complex caching mechanism: on the one hand, it does not send a request to the tour operator for each client request, but on the other hand, it keeps quite relevant prices. And gives them to the user's request, and background updates.

Today, all large operators already have fast-running API methods.

There is a third stage: about 10% of tour operators work in the old manner. That is, they estimate the approximate price of tickets (“they cost so much on average last year, and we will build it”), the approximate price of the hotel, and so on. And then, if anything, expose surcharge. Tours are cheap, but unexpectedly more expensive after booking. As a rule, this happens in certain areas, and we immediately disable these directions for such “dinosaurs” from being issued so as not to mislead the buyers.

As a result, we created a system where there is a search for approximately one hundred tour operators, and for this we had to understand a lot of legacy of the market.

Theory 6: it is worth working with dealers (incorrect)

There are tour operators who are engaged in almost completely selling overbought foreign tours. Just "repacking" them under your brand. They give good conditions, and you can really work with them - at first glance it is financially beneficial. In fact, it turned out that laying between the buyer and the tour operator means about 2-3 days of brakes. There were a lot of cancellations, a lot of problems with booking. Often, by the time they came to the office and started hitting the keyboard (and they were working manually), the hotel was no longer there. A dozen more companies were doing quite simply - they were collecting money and saying a week before the flight: “Your hotel isn’t, but you will live in a different one”.

Because of this, we do not always have the best prices for tours - in some cases, it can be found 2-3% cheaper from dealers. But we still turned off all such comrades - there was a lot of negativity.

Theory 7: showed the price - and the person immediately bought (incorrect)

Travelers know that airfares change often enough. I did not buy it today, I came in three days - the price is already higher. It's a shame, but such is life. We must take earlier, and everything will be fine.

Prices for tours change as often. We have one major partner who recounts Turkey and other popular destinations every 15 minutes, for example. And, worst of all, there is no price holding. That is, it can change at the time of booking and payment. You have found a tour, you begin to pay, and you are not given a hold on the price for even 15 minutes (airlines usually put at least an hour on the hour). And if suddenly it turns out more expensive, then it is proposed to make an additional payment or refuse from the tour with a full refund.

Most often, such surcharges occur where the package includes not a charter, but a regular flight. Charter - almost always a guarantee of price fixing.

Even large ones do not confirm every reservation. People buy on the Internet, compare the service on convenience with the purchase of a ticket and think that after paying for the tour they have already. Money is being held and only after a few minutes is written off. May come and failure. In areas where the percentage of such failures is high, we simply exclude suspicious tours from issuing until the percentage falls to a normal value.

Theory 8: it will be difficult with burning tours (true)

When five days before the tour it becomes clear that the charter is not dialed, and the hotel is not loaded as we would like, the tour begins to be sold for any money. Because if the place to sell even for the ruble, the company will earn the ruble. And if you do not sell - the company will not earn anything. The main problem with this approach is that it happens that the prices of last-minute tours are lower than the prices of early booking (I remind you that in 3-5 months you can take tours with a 40% discount usually). People just call the operator and say: "Here all the same is cheaper, rebook me."

As a result, a situation is formed when travelers do not want to book in advance and are waiting for discounts of hot tours. The operators themselves have solved the problem by setting the rules of the game: now it is not recommended to take more than last booking for last minute tours.

Many of the caution take little blocks. There is a suspicion that Sochi should be taken in April-May, for example, then it will be rather difficult.

Theory 9: Older People Will Not Ride With Us (Incorrect)

Despite the fact that some people do not trust the Internet (especially in the regions), they also have bank cards, but there are many buyers among them. First, of course, children take tours. Secondly, they do this: they come to the travel agency and ask in detail about the selected tour. And then, when everyone found out, show our price. And they say: "Make a discount." In half of the cases, they really do (every physical travel agency has a guaranteed reserve of 5–7% discount for any tour that they can squeak with, but can give). In the other half of the situations, they cannot provide such a price (we still have no offices, but they have, and these are costs), and therefore the dialogue was in someone else’s office, and we had the order.

Summary

In general, for now. If you're interested, next time I will tell you in which areas to buy a tour with flights is cheaper than to book a hotel yourself and take tickets (and why so). For example, now there is an option from Sochi from the image above, and this is not the only one, last week there were options for 110 rubles / night. These hotels can be taken separately, along with tickets, meals and transfer: if you get yourself, you need to check the “razdanannye” tours, if you have not yet taken the tickets - sometimes you should look in advance in the tours, it turns out quite cheap compared to traditional aggregators. All this has an economic explanation, but next time.