Asia’s first travel wholesale alliance, Trip Affiliates Network, has been formed
The alliance’s first members, & who have been integrated on a single distribution platform already available in the market, includes Westminster Travel, CN Booking, Bayu Buana, Aviation Services, Dragon Travel, InterAsia, Hotel Bank, Holiday Tours & Ark Travel Express
Many more members are in the pipeline, according to the network’s co-founder Tan Huck Khim, who is also executive director of Travel Prologue, which developed the integrated technology solution for the alliance
“There is a spiderweb of loose consortiums in Asia but there is no one to bring them all together,” said Tan, when asked for the impetus behind the network’s formation, adding that travel agents all face the same global competition & that banding together allows for economies of scale to come into play
“Our aim is to provide top players in the travel industry with a single platform to share content across borders & agencies, & enable the delivery of good content & competitive wholesale pricing across Asia to travellers.”
The process for the alliance’s formation first begun when Tan & his co-founders went on a roadshow earlier in May to meet with potential partners in countries such as Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia & the Philippines. It then snowballed into a full blown alliance after initial partners introduced more potential partners & sub-agents wanting to join
“Not much convincing was needed to get members onboard. We have a long pipeline & will expand further once this phase is completed,” said Tan. “There is no limit to the number of alliance members.”
He believes small & medium sized agencies are driving most of the demand for the alliance’s formation & that the benefit of getting locally contracted rates for agencies without a presence in a certain market is definitely one of the key advantages for members
With the combined content of its founding members, the alliance now boasts over 50,000 exclusive, directly negotiated hotel contracts & more than 150 airline relationships in the region, on top of a global stock of aggregated hotels & airlines inventory
Tan hopes Trip Affiliates Network can one day match the scale of Travel Leaders Group in the US & The Travel Network Group in Europe