News in Brief: Thursday October 24
The OctopusTravel name will tomorrow be ditched as GTA’s retail booking site for travel agents in Australia and New Zealand rebrands as TravelCube.
“Despite a new name and a new look, agents can continue to trust the expertise of our people, the reach of our global network and the reliability of our technological solutions,” vice president sales & marketing Pacific said.
“The OctopusTravel brand has served us well for the past decade however the time is right to join its achievements with our growing global brand exclusively for retail agents.”
Booking platform Innstant Travel has responded to agent demand by integrating eNett payment capability into its website so transactions using the virtual payment system can be completed as easily as credit card payments.
Agents should contact Innstant with their eNett number for the intergration to be activated.
There are currently in the order of 700 agents in Australia using the Innstant Travel system, and 60,000 globally. In addition to an inventory of 230,000 hotels, the mobile-enabled wholesale platform features events and sightseeing tours, with car rental soon to be reintroduced.
The office of African Wildlife Safaris and Natural Focus Safaris will operate with reduced personnel on the afternoon of Friday October 25 while most of the team attend a memorial service to celebrate the life of their colleague and friend Sue Cleveland.
Sue passed away last week after a long battle with cancer.
From 3pm until close of business, the company will have only a small team on hand to take calls and enquiries. It requested patience and understanding at this very sad time, asking for enquiries to be held until Monday where possible.
Travellers Choice has advised that it is currently experiencing problems with its email server, which mean the corporate office has been unable to send or receive emails messages since early Wednesday morning.
It will advise the industry when the system is up and running, but in the meantime the company has set up a hotmail account, which it is asking people to use for important messages that require responses.
The hotmail address is: au.travellerschoice@hotmail.com. Alternatively, the Travellers Choice corporate office can be contacted by phone on (08) 9223 6500.
To thank agents for their support throughout the year, Creative Holidays is offering agents a pre-Christmas treat of a gift card bonus for new bookings.
Every new booking to every destination worth more than $2000 will earn a $10 Coles/MYER gift card when deposited by November 4 for travel any time in 2014.
Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au
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