Gloria Slethaug, CEO of Connexus Travel today announced the successful live issuance of online airline tickets via the ticketing application developed by Aeronology, Connexus Travel’s new travel technology partner. “We’re very excited to now be operational using this world class application, and the future is bright for us.” Mrs Slethaug announced.
“The first tickets were two first class return tickets to London – the fare codes were quite complicated and what would normally take between 15 to 20 minutes to issue by an experienced travel consultant only took seconds to shop, book and issue. Since COVID our industry needs to be more productive and introduce internal systems that make our travel advisors focus on service and not just process. When you think about it to do that transaction with the ‘old normal’ was 15 minutes, and now the new normal is seconds,” Gloria stated.
“The next step is to automatically download that booking into our mid office without human intervention, and that process is only days away. It is an incredible advancement to what we have always done, and now we can grow our business four-fold without increasing costs. It had always been a balance between technical expertise by our travel advisors, and exceptional service to our valued clients. Now the focus is purely exceptional service, and the perfect booking within seconds.
With our recent arrangement in merging businesses of Jardine Travel into Connexus and plans for expansion in fields we had never thought about before, Connexus Travel now has the ability to consider new business models, and drive profitability and growth without driving costs up. Our valued customers will always be the forefront of our business, and now we have the ability to take a very long-range view of our business.
Connexus Travel has been part of the Hong Kong travel industry for many years, we will respect our past, celebrate our longevity and now launch into the amazing future by using world-class technology provided by businesses like Aeronology,” Mrs Slethaug explained.
“Connexus Travel, Hong Kong’s first ever licensed travel agent with offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei and Hsinchu City is our perfect launch partner in North Asia, and dealing with such a dynamic CEO as Gloria has been a pleasure,” Russell Carstensen, CEO of Aeronology said. “Gloria and her team knew they couldn’t just keep doing what they have always done, in fact Gloria knew this before COVID-19 changed our world. COVID re-enforced the need to change. Asia has a huge scope to increase productivity and service levels and I believe we can achieve that for our customers. I’ve known Gloria for 8 years and have seen her transition as the need has arisen as well as anyone I’ve seen.”
“Traditionally corporate and high-end travellers in Asia want a personalised service, the problem is margins are reducing and that technical expertise that was part of the travel advisor’s job description no longer exists. The tech-savvy travellers still need to know that when the market goes into meltdown as it did with COVID there will be someone they can talk to that can be there, OTA’s can’t.”
“Connexus Travel, led by Gloria and her incredible team will drive change in the markets they trade in, and I believe Gloria has the ability to expand her market to all of APAC, and potentially globally. It was terrific that the company who proved our ticketing technology was what we had stated it did with two First Class tickets to London. Bravo!” Carstensen said.
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