Under no Illusions over growth
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Developing systems that can be used on-the-go and to capture fast-growing markets will be a focus for Illusions Online moving forward, its vice president of sales for Asia Gregory Duffell has said.
Duffell told Travel Daily that the technology firm continues to look at what the future could hold for the industry when it comes to developing new partnerships and functions to its i-World Travel eXchange (IWTX) platform.
Currently this is focused on tools that can be used on tablets, as well as helping countries in areas like Asia where tourism numbers are growing faster than technological advances.
“We’ve been developing technology that means companies and employees can be empowered through a tablet, which means they can make changes to an itinerary immediately and it’s updated in real-time. There’s good money in ancillaries too and customers want to maximise tours, so it helps tour operators and destination management companies (DMCs) to have the tools on them right away,” Duffell explained. “There’s rich media behind the system too so during the process customers can see images and information that is already stored, and it’s all cloud-based so can be accessed anywhere.”
Illusions Online is making use of a huge amount of data to help companies pick out the right information that can then personalise a trip.
“Our dashboard is used extensively. Our customers don’t just want to see where they could be in a year but they want to see what the situation is now, then they can take those chunks of data and make a decision whether it’s catering for different rates or switching marketing tactics,” Duffell added.
Momentum is gaining for IWTX, which is expected to reach US$1 billion in total trade in 2015. The platform allows tour operators and DMCs to buy and sell among each other, and also makes automatic checks on information so the space for errors is low.
Having established itself in Europe and the Middle East, and with Duffell’s appointment, the company is now looking to grow in the Asia Pacific market.
“The APAC region is developing without much technology knowledge so our technology is going to help grow the DMCs there,” he said. “We’ve already doubled our office in Dubai and have a regional office in Bangkok with a data office to open in the Philippines next year.”
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