Govt travel behaviour ‘beats’ private sector – survey

TRAVEL agents have
reacted with shock to
recent findings from travel
data specialist Agentivity, that
show that government clients
make fewer changes and
request fewer cancellations
than private businesses.
Agentivity is integrated
with Galileo, automatically
capturing all agencies’ booking
activities.
In a snap survey of booking
activity in the local market
between January 1 and May
1, Agentivity found some
surprising differences between
the behaviour of typical
government accounts and
general corporate accounts.
The data shows that
government bookings have
significantly fewer changes
than other corporate bookings.
During the specified
timeframe, Agentivity found
that changes were made to
69% of government bookings
compared with 116% of
corporate bookings. The
difference is that corporate
customers tend to make most
changes prior to ticketing
(56%), whereas government
clients tend to make changes
post-ticketing (51%) when
agents then need to apply for
refunds, etc.
In terms of cancellations,
government officials seem to
be more conservative, with
17% of government bookings
cancelled during the indicated
timeframe, compared with
22% of corporate bookings.
When it comes to advance
purchase buying behaviour,
corporate clients tend to
book their travel more than
two weeks in advance.
Government officials seem to
make last-minute decisions
with regard to travel, generally
booking flights four days prior
to travel.
The data was based on
over 50 000 newly created
government bookings and just
over 10 000 newly created
corporate bookings.
Commenting on the results,
Yolandé Bouwer, Agentivity’s
gm for Southern Africa, said:
“One would think government
travel behaviour would typically
incur a very high change
rate but it’s most surprising
to see the corporate sector
outscoring them here by a
wide margin.
“The low book-to-travel
date gap among government
accounts, however, indicates
a likely higher average airfare
being paid by the public
sector.”
TMCs have questioned the
results.
One travel agent told
TNW: “The reality is just the
opposite. Government officials
are the masters of change. I
handle both corporate clients
and government officials. For
government clients, change
almost seems to be in
fashion.
“Our after-hours department
is extremely busy fielding
changes to government
bookings.”
The explanation for these
statistics might be that
the changes requested by
government are not recorded
as changes on the Agentivity
system, according to the
agent.
Yolandé, however, told
TNW that Agentivity picked up
any or all itinerary changes
whenever the PNR was
amended.
The system picked up
changes to airline, routing,
flight number, booking class,
text within passive sectors,
status code, property/hotel
name, room rate code, and
number of rooms, she said.
“We track all types of changes
on the GDS, whether touched
by the day office or the afterhours
team.”