BCD: Changing travel patterns drive hotel volume rise

BCD Travel has seen double-digit percentage growth in air and hotel booking activity so far this year – partly due to the changing travel patterns of clients.

The TMC revealed during a virtual media roundtable event that its global air transactions were up by 13 per cent year-on-year for the first five months of 2024. This included a 6 per cent increase in Europe, as well as rises of 16 per cent in the Americas and 13 per cent in the Asia-Pacific region.

BCD’s hotel sales have increased by 27 per cent globally over the same timescale. Europe saw a 16 per cent rise while there were 33 per cent and 12 per cent increases in the Americas and Asia-Pacific respectively.

The growth in hotel sales has been driven by a change in clients’ travel patterns, explained BCD Travel’s global CEO Stephan Baars.

“Maybe they’re travelling less, combining trips and staying longer in hotels,” he said. The growth also reflects BCD’s “heavy” investment in its hotel solutions, he explained.

For the whole of 2024, BCD projects that global net transactions will reach 95 per cent of 2019 levels, up by 10 percentage points from 2023, with Europe being furthest ahead in this recovery process.

Net transactions in Europe are forecast to be 3 per cent above 2019 levels. While transactions in the Americas and Asia-Pacific are set to reach 85 per cent and 87 per cent of 2019 levels respectively this year.

Baars said that transaction fees continue to be “by far the most requested and demanded model” from clients, although he also acknowledged more interest in other types of fee payment structures.

“Transaction fees are the simplest administrative way of allocating costs,” he added. “Transaction fees still pre-dominate, although there is increased interest in subscription or management fee models.

“It depends on what the customer’s needs are and what the customer wants. Customers are asking for simplicity: they want few fees, easier budgeting, less international dialogue and the principle of ‘one fee fits all’.

“This will not happen as we know that one size does not fit all, so we try to get models in place that help the customer, done in a partnership approach so the customer feels comfortable.”

During the call, BCD’s SVP of product planning and development Yannis Karmis also gave an update on the TMC’s AI projects, which include testing its use in helping agents to respond to emails.

Last year, it went through about 11,000 emails and reached an accuracy rate of about 97 per cent. For example, of 530 emails classified as invoice requests, only 14 were incorrectly classified, and of 462 emails classified as trip cancellation requests, only 14 were incorrectly classified.

Although the error rate is small, it demonstrated the need to still have agents involved in to process.

Karmis said that clients “expect perfection” when it comes to deploying AI and there was “no real tolerance of errors”.

“We’re focused not just on improving the reliability of the bot; it’s the end-to-end processes,” he added.