Hotel commission most important income source for agents

March 13, 2008 | Hospitality Industry

Since airline commissions were cut, the focus on hotel commissions by travel agents have increased manifold. A new survey of 200 travel companies finds now that hotel commissions are the most important source of income for most agents, followed by airline commissions/overrides and transaction fees.

Net Trans, a company specialising in recovering hotel commissions for travel agencies and other hotel bookers have just completed their annual survey and for this year, agents were asked which of their suppliers are the most important as a source of income. More agencies named hotel commission than any other source. 86 % of agents put hotel commissions as one of their three most important income sources, next on the list were airline commissions/overrides with 70 % and transaction fees with 64 %.

The survey represents over 200 company responses from all over the world. There were clear geographical differences with the UK, Ireland and Germany scoring highest on considering hotel commissions as the most important revenue source. Martin Jorgensen, Chief Executive Officer of Net Trans, was delighted about the results:

“Since airline commissions were cut, the focus on hotel commissions have increased manifold which we see in the huge increase of customers who wish to secure that they recover all of their commissions and have therefore joined Net Trans the last few years. This is reflected in 98 % of larger agencies and TMCs considering Net Trans to be an important supplier, proving that recovering hotel commission is a focus area for the travel agency community.”

Another result of the survey indicated that the main thing agents focus on when joining Net Trans is the increased commission and secondly the lower administrative cost. Martin Jorgensen commented:

�Obviously the bottom line increase is the most visible and obvious but it is nice that people recognise both the lower in-house administrative cost, the savings on bank charges and the faster payments that NetTrans achieves for them”.

Overall, the satisfaction levels with Net Trans services have increased in the last year. Jorgensen continued: “Our increased efforts in communicating and training our agents have meant that more of them make use of the product to it’s full extent and that has resulted in increased commission payments, in fact 99% of larger agencies and TMCs would recommend us to others. We will not rest on our laurels but aim to continue the improvement in our services in 2008.”