SkyLink's busy mini tradeshow
The Avianca table
Agents mingle in the always popular bar area
Devon Chin; Maria Manansala-Chin; Pat Doronio & Lorie Onia all of Amstar Travel & Tours
Gabriela Enriquez, Exotic Destinations & Christabel Sundram, Exclusive Tours
SkyLink’s annual Road Show touched down in Toronto last week attracting a full house of travel agents as well as a host of industry partners to the ballroom at the Woodbine Banquet & Convention Hall.
The full evening of supplier presentations, dinner and prizes were preceded by a mini trade show where agents had the opportunity to chat with reps and pick up the latest product info.
SkyLink’s focus continues to be honing in on the most effective, efficient and reliable solutions for travel agents’ airline ticket sales – in fact this year’s series of roadshows was entitled “Providing Solutions to Travel Agents”.
“It is our strong belief that SkyLink has always presented travel agents the best possible solutions and tools to be profitable. SkyLink has invested in its technology solutions and this year we have added and enhanced our travel platform-TripPro,” stated Director of Marketing Shanaz Pithawala welcoming guests and kicking off the formal portion of the event.
SkyLink President Yuvraj Datta reminded attendees that SkyLink has been in business here for 35 years. (Boy, time flies! I remember that like it was yesterday – and inking their 1st KLM deal… I was about 12 at the time.)
Much has transpired in the intervening years and besides the technology becoming ever more sophisticated, SkyLink has also just purchased and merged 2 additional call centres to handle business the old fashioned way.
That still may be the preferred method at times, but, SkyLink’s TripPro is continually being enhanced to help overcome what Yuvraj lists as the most challenging issues facing travel agents today: the continual erosion of profit margins; constant pricing & sched changes; complex interline agreements and expired time limits.
On top of it’s savvy technological tools for optimizing the air search, booking and ticketing Yuvray says TripPro also protects agents against the vagueries of manual processes which too often results in the dreaded debit memo.
Along with SkyLink’s 86 airline partners and 140 exclusive contracts – TripPro has the ability to source global content – not available directly to travel agents in North America.
