HIT Travel
Hadi Cheap tickets were always available in other parts of the
world. Most notably in Bangkok and Hong Kong, places most foreigners would
visit to renew their visas. In the old days foreigners would buy all their
tickets outside Japan, even if it meant forfeiting one leg of a round trip.
In the end it always saved them money. Hadi The early bird gets the worm. But it didn’t take long
for other entrepreneurs to follow. Before you knew it, discount travel agencies
had sprung up all over town. However, business for our agency was blooming.
I worked myself up from supervisor to manager to branch manager, eventually
being responsible for a staff of 60 representing 48 different nationalities.
Just imagine. Guys speaking 48 different languages, all with different cultural
backgrounds. And you have to find a way to motivate them all for a common
goal. Hadi It feels great. Here I am in my own office in Ebisu, selling
tickets to foreigners and opening my first branch office in Okinawa at this
very moment. This will make me the first in Tokyo to seriously offer domestic
travel packages to sunny Okinawa, where you can scuba all year round, enjoy
Chinese food, and relax on the beach. In short, for very little money you
can get away from the city Hadi From the traveler’s point of view the art of running
a successful travel agency may look quite simple. A guy walks into a shop,
buys a ticket, and that’s it. In reality the secret of success is accurately
predicting demand — being able to foresee travel trends, and then securing
blocks of tickets well ahead of time. Let’s say at the beginning of
the year I commit to buying a certain number of tickets from a certain airline
to a certain destination. The higher the number I commit to, the larger
the discount I get. This in turn allows me to offer cheaper tickets to such
a destination than the competition can. Hadi Apart from there being two types of agents, wholesalers and
retailers, this is basically an accurate description of how the business
works in Japan today. Learn to become better at this game or you’re
out. Fortunately I have been getting better for the last 15 years. Hadi Exactly. Hadi In the discount market you have to work with extremely slim
profit margins. Companies that do not produce volume will not be able to
compete in the long run. If you have volume you can offer lower prices and
still generate enough profit to maintain a healthy business. This is where
management skills and experience come in. I see smaller agencies getting
squeezed out of the market. More and more shops will lose money if they
continue to stay open, but they will lose all opportunity to make money
if they close. It is the survival of the fittest. There will be a shakeout
in the industry that will affect companies on both the high and the low
end. Hadi They get the human touch. The customers must feel that you
are genuinely trying to help them. The fact that HIT Travel is doing just
fine in this department is evidenced by our large base of satisfied repeat
customers. Theoretically you could sell tickets from vending machines. But
in practice this only works for full-fare class. To compete successfully
my staff must work for the full satisfaction of their customers. Postcards
from all over the world from happy customers are witness to our personal
relationship with our customers. That’s what makes us happy and gives
us the motivation to provide reliable but also friendly service.
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