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Introduction
As large OTAs dominate the market and suppliers prioritize direct bookings, smaller agencies must differentiate through superior payment flexibility. This document presents collaborative research from KAE strategic intelligence consultancy, surveying 300 senior payment decision-makers across Europe to understand their core challenges and objectives.
Research: Three Primary Objectives for OTAs
The research reveals European OTAs are unified around three priorities. Most significantly, 62% identify winning customer loyalty as paramount, yet struggle with infrequent purchases and abundant competition. Agencies with seamless payment experiences see 20% more repeat bookings. Nearly half (49%) focus on scaling financial operations efficiently, driven by fragmented platforms and fraud threats—unified platforms achieve 30% faster reconciliation and 20% fewer discrepancies. The third priority, maximizing growth (43%), faces challenges from high acquisition costs and platform fatigue, while virtual card strategies can improve margins by 1-3% per transaction.
Five Ways Your Travel Agency Can Thrive
Our paper outlines actionable strategies beginning with owning the customer relationship as Merchant of Record, enabling direct payment control, brand recognition, and valuable transaction data access. The second strategy emphasizes localized payment methods—German customers favor PayPal and BNPL, UK customers prioritize BNPL and AmEx, while French customers prefer Cartes Bancaires—with agencies seeing 30% higher conversion rates through localization.
Unifying accounting operations through single platforms handling both PayIns and PayOuts eliminates operational complexity through automated reconciliation. Protecting against fraud requires AI-powered monitoring, 3D Secure, and tokenization, reducing chargebacks by up to 50%. Finally, agencies can transform payments into profit generators through virtual card strategies, AI-optimized issuing, and minimized FX fees, creating entirely new revenue streams.