Easy to FIT their schedules

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

These days, if you hear someone in the travel or tourism industry talking about "fits", they are unlikely to be referring to seizures or tantrums.

What they mean are free and independent travellers (FITs), or the people who turn their noses up at packaged tours and make their own travel arrangements.

FITs are a growing and sought-after market because they often enjoy a high disposable income, even if they might show a taste for staying in backpacker's hostels.

Furthermore, as FITs arrive in the country unfettered by packaged itineraries, their custom is up for grabs by a broader range of tourism related businesses.

Until recently FITs have been a notoriously difficult audience to reach, but Auckland-based Easybook Tours believes it has cracked this problem by using the internet to deliver the flexibility travellers seek.

At the Easybook website individual travellers from New Zealand or overseas as well as travel agents may book accommodation, excursions, sightseeing trips and attractions, rental vehicles and scheduled transport, including flights, trains, buses and ferries.

Easybook director Don Saunders says the website has been designed to be used by people with no knowledge of New Zealand, but it is not going out of its way to "sell" the country and neither is it an information site.

"We are here to make bookings. If you want to know the mean temperature in Queenstown in July, don't come to our site."

Suppliers pay Easybook an annual subscription of $125 + GST to appear on the website, but Mr Saunders says this cost will easily be offset by increased business - from other Easybook suppliers as well as travellers.

"A car rental company can use the website to make hotel bookings for its clients and vice versa. They are doing referrals all the time."

As Easybook has only recently been launched after a year in development, Mr Saunders could not yet provide any statistics to back this claim up, but he is confident enough to offer a guarantee that if revenue levels do not reach agreed targets Easybook will host the supplier free of charge until such time as it does.

According to Mr Saunders, Easybook included 375 suppliers at its launch, of which about half are accommodation providers.

This is much less than the number of properties listed by such online directories as Jasons Travel Media or the Automobile Association, but Mr Saunders points out that these sites do not provide a full "look, book and settle" service.

"We do need a broader range of suppliers, but we are not sure quite how many. For example, I've just come back from a tourism conference where we were told there are 16,000 travel-related companies in NZ, but that seems too high - they may have included restaurants.

"Our target is over 500 in 12 months and we'll build from there."

Mr Saunders, who was formerly Asia/Japan regional manager at The Mount Cook group, and his fellow director Bert Queenin, who spent 30 years with the New Zealand Tourism Board, bought the company late last year. At that time Easybook operated as an inbound tour operator, which also published a printed directory.

"We bought the company because we wanted the database printed and, because we are going global with this, we liked the Easybook name," says Mr Saunders.

The website, which was developed in association with Christchurch-based information technology company World First Solutions, has already enabled Easybook to break into the wholesale travel market.

But it has also formed a joint venture software with World First's Peter Raymond to market the technology overseas.

Mr Saunders concedes that the internet has so far proved to be a disappointing medium for sales.

"At the moment most of the internet transactions are for air tickets. There's still a reluctance to use your credit card to pay someone who is at the other side of the world. That's why we are making Easybook available to travel agents overseas, so people can sit down and deal with someone face to face."

But there are also signs that consumer resistance to booking online is diminishing in some areas.

One recent Easybook recruit, Heritage and Character Inns, which represents around 50 motels, has confirmed that 70 per cent of its business now comes from the internet.

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