Seto’s debrief of Winter 2014/2015: rather mediocre!

This morning, it is Morocco’s tourism office that welcomed Seto and its guests who came to retrieve the assessment of the winter season of tour-operators.

Nothing surprising, the winter 2014/2015 was not very successful for these producers, and not much better for Morocco. The destination, without really knowing why other than the fact that it’s a Muslim country, is experiencing a drop of French visitors by 31%.

And the numbers speak for themselves, Winter was once again a failure for French travel companies. Generally speaking, of course.

However, while business revenues show a considerable drop, the unit earnings remains quite stable. Which proves, once more, that travel companies always attempt to adapt their offer to the demand. A sort of yield management.

And just like last year, tour-operators looking at their stats and testing the wind, are placing their bets on the summer season. Hoping that last minute sales will make up for the delay accumulated in the last few weeks.

But the most interesting aspects of this assessment are not the graphs and pie charts, that are often hard to interpret, but rather the major trends that can be extrapolated.

In this way, we can observe that travel companies are betting on, once again, “Individual Clubs” at a 6 point increase for 37% of the market share.

“Individual stays” are losing 5%, tours remain stable, even though “à la carte” and group excursions are losing 1 point.

This proves that it comes and goes.

Clubs are “trending" once again, which seems, after all, rather logical considering the economic situation of our country.

And they are leaving a rather interesting opening to “industrial” travel companies, who after researching, have finally managed to find (or benefit) from the crisis a manner to offer an accessible (and all included) product to the majority.

Another interesting observation: the breakdown of sales per distribution channel. This is where we notice how much the market has evolved and that “voluntary” distribution networks should have a lot to worry about.

According the Seto numbers, “indirect” sales (travel agencies) only account for 34% of the sales of Tour Operators, plus 13% coming from call centers.

However, the websites of TO still represent 20% of the sales. And if we add their “own” agencies (26%) we reach a total of 46%. Without mentioning the sales of “direct groups” that reap 8% of the market shares!

We must admit that travel companies seem stretched to the limit by networks that are more worried about defending their self-interest than being concerned about the evolutions of the market. And in the long run, this could accentuate the trend further.

We can suppose, after this seminary of the Seto, that it is preparing to put on a difficult battle and is attempting to “change” the models.

In any case, a lot of action to be expected in the upcoming weeks.