Specialist
Former senior executive at Dreamlines GmbH
Agenda
- Bush fire and Coronavirus impact on tourist flows
- Changes in market composition and pressure on travel agents and tour operators
- Australian cruise vertical – opportunities and underlying trends
Questions
1.
What secular or structural trends are shaping the tourism market in Australia today?
2.
What has the proliferation in online agents, resulting in options for tourists, meant for the specific market segments being shaped by a move to online? Is it clear that there are certain players that dominate one specific niche in the online offerings? How has the market segmented itself as a result of online becoming bigger?
3.
What is happening to the physical provision of tourism services in the domestic market?
4.
How have the methods or strategies of tour operators – AAT Kings, Intrepid, Journey Beyond – for going to market changed in the broader context of online becoming more important? Are the OTAs an important channel for them or have they been able to build direct distribution?
5.
Are there specific segments or niches of the tourism market which lend themselves more to direct business? Would there be certain activities where direct would be more normal for that to be a bigger chunk of the overall channel?
6.
Are there always going to be activities that will be booked through an agent?
7.
Generally, how is the relationship between the tour operators and the agents changing? Can you give us some insight into the dynamics that shape those relationships and what has changed over the past 5-10 years?
8.
Have the commissions come under pressure, especially for the brick-and-mortar travel agencies whose business has been taken away by the OTAs?
9.
When you talk about back-end commissions, how does that work explicitly and how high are they?
10.
In the cruise vertical, as a brief case study on distribution, you mentioned that Princess and P&O’s business would be 50% direct. How would the remaining 50% break down between OTA vs brick-and-mortar agents?
11.
Across operators, with 50% of the business being direct, how much larger has online gotten for them given that Flight Centre Travel has dropped the ball, etc?
12.
With front-end commissions sitting around 10% across the market as a whole, is it significantly different for the cruise vertical?
13.
Are there other tourism segments that have similar fare structures or non-commissionable fare structures to the cruise market?
14.
With cruise going towards a more commoditised item, do cruise players still want to build out direct business, or are they satisfied with the current split?
15.
It is difficult to avoid speaking about some of the short-term headwinds to the market. Do you think the bushfires have had a substantial impact?
16.
Is the AUD 1bn of destroyed annual value in the Australian tourism industry from the bushfires broad- based, meaning it does not impact one particular vertical? Or would you say there are specific pockets of the market that are more impacted by the bushfires than not?
17.
You mentioned the Chinese inbound traveller numbers have almost ground to a halt due to the impact of coronavirus, which has impacted specific markets or activities. Where do Chinese tourists go typically and what do they do? You mentioned the Gold Coast and Cairns.
18.
What lessons did you learn at Qantas when the SARS outbreak happened in 2002-03? Can we draw parallels with the current situation?
19.
What are the basic growth characteristics of this market in a normalised scenario? What is the annual rate of growth in the market, or which segments do you think are fastest-growing or experiencing decline?
20.
How do you view Journey Beyond’s positioning? Is it well-positioned to capture changes in the composition of the tourist market? Can it capture growth?
21.
Is the trains business a good business?
22.
Are there any other travel businesses or tour operators that are well-positioned? We spoke about AAT Kings, Globus and Intrepid.
23.
With Flight Centre Travel in mind, to what extent is it terminal decline for the brick-and-mortar retailers? How much of the pressure on this business is structural vs cyclical?
24.
When you think about this market and the direction it is headed, what factors do you think about that shape that outlook? What do you think we should be paying close attention to?
