The roundtable debate was hosted in the Cucina Restaurant at the newly-opened Renaissance Doha City Center Hotel, located in Doha's new business distr
Is it a challenge to convince your clients of the value of your service fee?
Khurshid: Yes of course there are lots of challenges. Especially with this being a small market and there being so many agents here. It becomes a very price-driven market.
In the days when we used to have commission I would see travel agents then who were giving out all their commission and just working with the minimum. These days it doesn’t make much difference in the commission level but the market has become a lot more stretched.
Darim: It comes back to what is the client looking for in terms of service from the agent — does the agent just offer a ticketing service or does the agent offer added value as well?
That’s really where an agent could potentially make a lot of money, from the added value that they bring to a client. Whether it’s offering ancillary services, or booking hotels which still generates quite nice commissions. It’s also in terms of the reporting you can give your clients, reconciliation of credit card statements, offering different forms of credit cards statement.
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So there is a lot of added value that we can bring to the table as a company if a client is looking for a travel management company rather then just a travel agent.
In your experience are companies here willing to pay for that ‘added value’ for a professional travel management company — or do agencies here still act as ‘ticket bookers’?
Darim: It depends on the client and how you are coming across to your clients. Some do and some don’t. It also depends on how you pitch yourself to your clients.
You’ve got companies here that just want tickets and then there are those companies that have the experience of working with a TMC on a global level who say, I want to work with this agency because they are affiliated to this brand and we want to feed off that.
Khurshid: It all depends on the clients and your relationship with them. I still feel that even if the clients know there is a service fee involved in the transaction; most customers are willing to pay the fee because they get that consultancy service. I try to act as a travel management company first and then as a travel agent.
We are no longer an order-taker — I think we are more a consultancy company. We need to bring to the table all the added value for the service fee they are willing to pay us.
What we see in the market now is that the global travel management companies are pitching up in Qatar and they are doing very well because they are able to bring great value to most of the big corporates as they have a global contract. It’s the same with most of the hotels —they are able to negotiate global contracts and can get good value for that.
What do corporates value more, service levels or price?
Khurshid: It goes hand in hand. I’m sure we all are sitting here from different travel management companies and we have our yield, and the level of service goes hand in hand.
Darim: It’s also about educating the client — there are a lot of corporates in Qatar who are still in the dark ages, and that’s putting it politely.
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