Mastercard, Kantox, Fastpayhotels and Caixabank discuss the future of the travel industry at the baVel Digtial Summit. Digitization of the financial department takes centre stage in the recovery of the travel industry.
BARCELONA – Voxel Group, a leading specialist in electronic invoicing and B2B payments in the travel industry, has held a new debate in the setting of the baVel Digital Summit with the goal of analysing future trends in the travel industry based on data generated by leading industry players over the last 6 months.
The session included participants Ana Arjones, Manager of Enterprise Partnerships at Travel Industries at Mastercard; Àlex Gisbert, founder and CEO at Fastpayhotels; Antonio Rami, co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Kantox; Pancho Pérez Salazar, Business Development Manager at Comercia Global Payments (Caixabank Hotels & Tourism); and Héctor Martín, VP of Global Sales at Voxel Group, who chaired.
According to Mastercard’s data, the beginning of the recovery will be led by domestic road trips, millennials and last-minute bookings. For travel businesses, this will have a clear impact on prices, but it will also mean greater opportunities for countryside and local operations. In this regard, Fastpayhotels reckons that the value of transactions will decline from 300-400 euros to 150-170 euros and consequently the margin of all businesses in the value chain will similarly be affected. Àlex Gisbert of Faspayhotels added that “there is less and less credit in the sector and many businesses are reinventing themselves and renegotiating conditions with their partners so as to charge before check-in. These are times of creativity and flexibility.”
To curb the impact of this loss, all the panellists agreed that the optimization of processes and the reduction of structural costs will be key, especially in an industry that has focused on commercial processes while leaving aside process optimization in the financial departments (currency exchange, back-office processes, distribution, etc.) “It is essential that those responsible for finance understand the technology, and the costs or savings made when processing reservations and transactions, and the types of rate… with one technological tool or another,” remarked Pancho Pérez of Comercia Global Payments (Caixabank Hotels & Tourism). Kantox offered a longer-term view of recovery, emphasizing the need to analyse costs and optimize internal processes for greater profit and even to gain market share in 5 or 10 years.
According to the fintech firm’s data, 81% of businesses expect to carry out more processing work by their finance teams, with the same resources. In the words of Kantox’s Antonio Rami, “The only way to solve this is to apply technology to processes and empower workers to stop them from doing repetitive tasks and getting them to participate in the company’s strategic decision-making.”
This baVel Digital Summit session saw the participation of over one hundred live viewers. The series of online debates came into being last April with the aim of contributing and helping in the recovery of each and every one of the companies that make up the travel, hospitality and F&B industries in the face of the current situation in these sectors. The next session is scheduled for Wednesday, October 21 and will analyse the strategies to minimize risk in B2B payments in the travel industry and the new scenario that will emerge after the pandemic, and will include speakers from Mastercard, Ingenico ePayments, Hotelbeds and others.
The baVel Digital Summit is supported by Barclaycard, Mastercard, Kantox, eNett and CaixaBank Hotels & Tourism.
Tatiana is the news coordinator for TravelDailyNews Media Network (traveldailynews.gr, traveldailynews.com and traveldailynews.asia). Her role includes monitoring the hundreds of news sources of TravelDailyNews Media Network and skimming the most important according to our strategy.
She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication & Mass Media from Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens and she has been editor and editor-in-chief in various economic magazines and newspapers.
