JEDDAH, 21 May — Saudi Arabia’s seekers of travel and hospitality industry services can now look forward to a better deal. This follows the introduction of a new concept of wholesale business in the travel trade here yesterday. The occasion was the launch of Destinations Of The World (DOTW) Saudi Arabia at a meeting of representatives of travel, tour and hospitality sectors at the Westin Jeddah Hotel.
DOTW has newly entered into a master franchise agreement with Turki Al-Ibrahim, chairman of the Saudi Business Insight Group (SBI). The DOTW has its sales and operations team headed by Raed Hasan Habiss, chief executive officer. “This brings neutrality into the wholesale travel business and over 2,000 travel agents will have the facility of pre-booking prepaying for hotels, apartments, car hire and ground services in more than 600 cities worldwide. They will not have to worry about losing their consumers directly to DOTW Saudi Arabia since we don’t retail or sell directly to the end consumer. Of course the end consumer is the ultimate beneficiary,” Habiss told a press conference. Keith Fernandez, the Dubai-based general manager of DOTW, accompanied him. Habiss said the DOTW concept was the brainchild of Fernandez.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the World Tourism Organization (WTO) have stated that the outbound travel market of the Kingdom represents over 60 percent of the Middle East travel market and this is in excess of $7 billion. This potential is not fully tapped and the business in the Kingdom is highly fragmented. The consumer is not aware that by pre-booking and prepaying for these services via their travel agents in the Kingdom, they can benefit from the wholesale rates and quality services offered by DOTW, Habiss said, adding: “Our incoming operations will support the national tourism industry by offering travel agents and tour services through DOTW offices worldwide. Through our database and information, rates for hotels apartments, meet and assist, transfers, car and bus rentals, sightseeing tours in the Kingdom and the facility of booking these products and services will be made available through DOTW Saudi Arabia. “While the government is investing into the infrastructure to allow visitors from all over the world to visit Makkah and Madinah, we as a private sector enterprise will assist to expand these efforts through the global reservation system of DOTW Saudi Arabia,” Habiss said. Fernandez said prior to 1993, there were no wholesale travel companies based in the region and only a handful of travel agents provided a complete travel service to consumers.
More than 80 percent of travel agents in the region sold just air tickets and did not have the facility to pre-book and prepay for land services on a global basis. The main reason was that only a few suppliers from Europe, Africa, Middle East and the Far East distributed their products and services to a few of the larger travel agents in each of the Middle East cities and completely ignored the rest of the market. This opportunity was recognized by DOTW and it invested time and resources to establish itself as the first travel company in the Middle East to produce a user-friendly travel manual, establish a wholesale travel company in Dubai, develop an electronic travel brochure, create the largest distribution network of retailers in the region, introduce and implement the concept of franchising the wholesale travel business and establish a network of nine franchise offices, and develop a website to distribute its products and services and process bookings online.
The competition has only strengthened our resolve to improve the quality of our products and services, contract better rates and allocations and commence the development of an online reservation system. The objective is to advise the end consumer that the Kingdom now has a quality wholesale travel company offering quality products at wholesale prices through the travel agents in the country.
