Cristian Balcescu, chairman of the travel agency CMB Travel, is counting on working with customers online this year.
“We”ve opted for the online business formula this year and this is a final decision. This does not mean we will not operate in the traditional way, too, but we will not open branches in other localities,” states Cristian Balcescu.
“Customers are more prepared for this kind of move than we”d expect,” he adds. In other countries, tourists are used to accessing travel agency websites and booking packages this way.
Balcescu, 55, states the agency he runs plans to launch the new system onto the market during the summer season.
“We will conceive our products on the basis of orders, we are processing an extremely large offering and our staff is already prepared. Customers are also ready, they want to construct their holidays themselves and not as part of a group,” explains Balcescu.
The web interface, which has been developed over the past two years, has been built by an IT company in an outsourcing operation, and will demand total investments of 50,000 euros.
“We are working together as regards research. There are no IT specialists in tourism in Romania,” says Balcescu.
The company”s representative says they have already published catalogues for the foreign market, and the agency has made several seaside offers available on the British market, through the local agency Peltours.
Peltours had operated on the Romanian market before, during the ”90s, and withdrew from this country. “Bulgaria is killing us on the British market. Should this work, it would be a great success story on a very important market,” states Balcescu.
This method of working online with customers has been adopted by other travel agencies, as well, but they eventually gave up this system as it proved to be too complicated.
“It is high time we gave up saying ”we are good at everything” and specialised in what we can really deliver,” explains Balcescu. According to him, there is a similar type of approach among foreign travel agencies, too.
“Sooner or later, each of these agencies will attract customers, sometimes important ones. But there”s no way they can deliver all the services they are boasting. They purchase packages from other agencies and resell them,” stated Balcescu.
He says that these moves are made informally and customers are not informed on these issues, not realising that such a system entails higher prices for final customers.
The CMB Travel chairman says that the direct consequence of travel agencies” failure to keep up with the preferences of the Romanian tourism service users is a lack of confidence in these agencies.