In Minsk on April 14, within the framework of the Russian-Belarusian Tourism Congress, an international conference IT Travel: Points of convergence was held.
Representatives of both countries discussed the possibilities for optimizing business processes, international legislation , new forms of cooperation, as well as prospects for the development of both markets.
Conference recordings are available for colleagues who were unable to attend the event.
Opening the first part of the conference in the framework of the panel discussion “IT Travel: points of convergence of the Russian and Belarusian markets”, Filipp Guly, Chairman of the Board of the Republican Union of the Tourism Industry, outlined the main specifics of the Belarusian tourist industry: “For us, the topic of high technologies created in the Russian Federation is a new topic, not quite familiar to most specialists, in fact, only the largest companies and networks use online sales and automation systems in their activities. That is why I believe that acquaintance with this topic within the framework of our event is especially important for realizing the prospects for the development of the domestic and international tourism market of the Republic.
A few days before the conference, the landmark news about the accession the national air carrier of Belarus — Belavia — to the M2 multilateral agreement, which is administered by TCH.
As part of her speech at the conference, Oksana Danilova, Head of the Commercial Department of TCH, said that cooperation with TCH on the M2 project enables airlines to more effectively compose complex routes with transfers involving other air carriers. As a final product, this is of interest to both travel agencies and passengers.
“Belavia has become the 27th airline to join the M2 project, which already includes more than 15 hub airports, including Minsk. Thus, cooperation between TCH and Belavia enables the participating agencies of the Air Transport Settlement System (ATSS) of Russia, the CIS and Belarus to create complex air routes for each client,” Oksana commented.
Oksana’s presentation included information about ATSS, as one of the three global systems of mutual settlements in air transport, as well as about TCH, as the executive body of ATSS and provider of neutral flow.
Anna Filippova, director of promotion and training at My Agent, an online platform for booking transport services, hotels, and insurance policies, shared the dynamics of the growth in sales of air and railway tickets shown in the image below. It was this explosive growth and high interest in booking this content through the My Agent platform that helped the company's management decide to scale their experience in foreign markets to the Republic:
“In each country where the My Agent service is presented, we choose the most relevant forms of our presence. To enter and promote in the Belarusian market, this will be a strategic partnership format with one of the country's leading agencies, TRUST AERO TOURS. Agents will have access to all the features of the My Agent platform, and issues of organizing work, promotion and mutual settlements will be on the side of our partner in order to simplify the process as much as possible for all agents and operators of the Republic”, says Anna Filippova.
Airtour First Deputy General Director Vadim Kasyanov introduced the Agent.aero platform, which allows tour operators, travel agents, business travel agencies, hotel owners, to add the sale of air content from Aerotour in addition to their core business and offer services to customers:
“We have integrated into our platform the maximum number of airlines with direct sales channels (NDC), not only Russian, but also foreign. This allowed to keep most of the content even after the departure of international GDS systems. We tried to simplify our system as much as possible so that any employee of a travel company, even a non-professional, can work comfortably in it. In addition, we can also provide automated tools to companies interested in creating their own subagency network.”
Sergey Petryakov, Commercial Director of TravelLine, shared analytics and trends in the development of online sales channels for hotels. So, after the departure of Booking.com, among the main online consolidators, sales volumes were distributed as follows: Ostrovok.ru (40.69%), Bronevik.com (23.85%), Acase.ru (9.76%). Thus, according to TravelLine, the top three online travel services provide 74% of sales for hoteliers from their total number. Despite this, according to the expert, the main sales channel for the hotel remains its website (54%), which requires special attention to this tool:
“There are four simple principles of an effective hotel website that need to be followed in order to sustainably increase the number of sales. The first is ease of use for the user. The second is adaptability, according to SlickJump, 83% of users access the site from mobile. The third is high-quality content – the client should not look for information about the hotel's capabilities and services throughout the site or on third-party resources, photos should be informative and of high quality. And lastly, it is imperative to have a structured online booking module in a prominent place for the client. Gone are the days when the site performed exclusively image functions, now it is a commercial tool.”
Dmitry Tyurin, Head of the Commercial Department at i'way in Russia and the CIS, spoke about the main trends and capabilities of online systems for booking transfer services for tourists and corporate clients. The most important of them are a wide range of available transport online, such services as informing the client at all stages of booking, flight tracking, availability anywhere in the world, automatic calculation of prices and commissions, communication with the driver and online support service. All this functionality is also available in the mobile application.
The second discussion of the conference was focused on expanding opportunities in matters of tourist content and automation for travel agents, tour operators and business travel agencies in Belarus.
Dmitry Oliferko, CEO of Bronevik.com, told how to make Belarusian travel portals more convenient through the option of online hotel booking.
“According to our company, Belarus tops the list of the most popular neighboring countries among Russian tourists. We propose to make travel agencies and portals of the Republic more convenient for travelers and install our booking module for free. With the departure of major market players, users are looking for new hotel services and turn to completely different resources. Bronevik.com cooperates with Russian regional tourist portals and installs a hotel booking module on their websites using the White Label model. Portal visitors can select a city, arrival dates, number of guests and get a list of all available offers for booking — hotels, mini-hotels, guest houses, hostels, apartments, campsites, etc. In total, there are more than 50,000 different objects in the Bronevik.com database . At the same time, the portal will receive a commission from each completed booking. We take care of customer service and all work with hotels.
Alexey Pashkov, executive director of BizOnTrip, highlighted the possibilities of automated technologies for the corporate market segment of the Republic:
“In the process of preparing for the congress in Minsk and at the congress itself, we had a fruitful conversation with our Belarusian colleagues. The received analytics allows me to say that our IT solutions in the corporate segment do not require specific modifications for the agencies of the Republic. In our opinion, the travel services market in the business segment has ample opportunities for automation, improving the efficiency and quality of service provision. BizOnTrip is focused on solving the tasks of automating the process of sending employees to medium and large companies. Thanks to the experience of operating our solution with clients, we are constantly increasing our expertise, and we are happy to share it with our future partners. For agencies, the introduction of technologies such as ours will allow them to bring the quality of service to their clients to a new level, simplify internal operational processes, reduce the cost of providing services and concentrate on business development.
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“The number of IT Travel startups is actively growing from year to year, we see the most active development in the segment of excursions and sightseeing tours, as well as online tools for hoteliers. Marketplaces, electronic guides, as well as IT solutions for automating the work of travel companies of various levels are emerging. The choice of services for hoteliers is expanding – online concierge, check-in automation, analytics services, reputation management, etc.
According to the business orientation structure, B2B direction, including B2B2C, accounts for 60% of projects. For participants in the tourism and hotel market, this opens up new opportunities for the development and digital transformation of the tourism business through partnerships with innovative TravelTech projects.
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Daria Kochetkova, Managing Director of Ostrovok.ru, raised the issue of regulating international agreements to simplify the work of Russian suppliers on the market of the Republic:
“Since January 1, 2023, serious changes have taken place in the Belarusian legislation, which have complicated the interaction of Russian and Belarusian companies in terms of document flow, currency control and residence. Close cooperation with the Republican Union of the Tourism Industry allowed us to bring the contractual interaction in line with the local regulatory framework and tax requirements. Now there are no restrictions for Belarusian hoteliers to work with Ostrovok.ru, and the number of connections of local accommodation facilities connected to our extranet has already tripled. Belarus ranks first among foreign destinations booked by our users this year, therefore, given the current booking dynamics, we expect a good season and 100% occupancy.”
Valentin Miklyaev, CEO of Bnovo, a leading Russian developer of IT solutions for the hotel business, gave recommendations to Belarusian hoteliers:
“According to Bnovo statistics, the largest share of incoming hotel traffic in Belarus is direct bookings. Nevertheless, speaking about attracting a new flow of guests, we now see the two most effective tools: sales on OTA channels and mapping services. We recommend any accommodation facility in the republic to maximize its presence on online storefronts, online booking systems and various classifications. This will make the hotel visible, multiply the coverage, recognition, and, accordingly, sales.”
In addition, the expert stressed the importance of partnership between IT companies and hoteliers:
“I want to focus on the interaction between the hotel business and developers like Bnovo. It is always a joint partnership. We recommend moving away from subjective opinions and relying on accurate analytics and forecasts, which our IT solutions already provide today. We subject any hypothesis or promotion idea to testing, metrics and detailed analysis. Bnovo is experimenting a lot with management system updates to give hotels the most accurate and efficient tool. Therefore, I urge hoteliers to treat the developer as a partner in conducting experiments, and to get involved as much as possible in the common work with the common goal of increasing income.
Mikhail Kalchenko, Product Development Director at RZD-Digital Passenger Solutions, spoke about the dynamics of ticket sales for trains running between Russia and Belarus. He cited the results of the platform’s agency channels:
Innovative Mobility: “The monthly passenger traffic between Russia and the Republic of Belarus has almost doubled compared to the pre-pandemic 2019. All this requires new tools that would allow tourists to improve their customer experience by purchasing additional services online, taking advantage of the opportunity to build complex multimodal routes using various modes of transport. For a travel agent, the RZD CPR Innovative Mobility platform allows: making all the necessary settlements, managing contracts and tariffs, a multimodal route constructor, analytics and a content platform – and all this in one window mode.
Conference partners: RZD Digital Passenger Solutions, Bnovo, TravelLine, Cbooking, Ostrovok.ru, Bronevik.com, My Agent, BizOnTrip, i'way, Aerotour, TCH