Where are you off to this winter? Have you booked yet? All done online? Or did you see a real person in a shop?
If you used feet and face-to-face, you would be, surprisingly, in the majority. For, despite the flood of travellers using the internet to research their journeys, a new study has found that many of us still love our travel agents.
The study, by Tourism Research Australia, found that although nearly 2/3 of international tourists research their overseas travel online, less than half book there. Australian holidaymakers like their human contact even more, with only one-third booking online.
As expected, power shifted from the bricks-and-mortar travel agents when the public found they could compare prices online. The global recession and greater price competition has added to the shift.
Although still popular, travel agents are no longer the “gatekeepers” of the industry, says a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report prepared for the Federal Government. The report says that it is now “common place for consumers to by-pass travel agents and contract directly with suppliers“.
Since 2001, travel agent revenue has not kept up with overall money spent on travel services, says the report.
The report also says the biggest loser in the shifting industry has been the sole, independent agent while the number of chains and franchises have increased. This concentration of travel agents means that 40 per cent of approximately 3000 businesses are now part of a chain.
Recent data compiled by Roy Morgan shows that the largest of the chains, Flight Centre, attracted the most bookings for leisure travel. The research shows 36.6 per cent of Australians booked their leisure travel through a travel agent, with nearly 1 in 10 choosing to book through Flight Centre.
The industry is expecting chains and franchises will be in a position to offer cheaper travel products in the future but that ‘niche’ travel agents who provide cruises or other types of specialised travel will retain a loyal customer base.
Will recent plans for a Doncaster Line stay on track? Wes Mountain and Clemmie Wetherall report.
It’s 6:00pm on a cold Thursday night in Doncaster and 22 people sit under fluorescent lighting, waiting to talk about trains. There are just two women, and only five people under the age of 60.
Engineer Tim Gosbell, Leader of the Doncaster Rail Study, is at the Manningham Civic Centre to present the study’s recommendations on a train line that could someday shuttle up to 56,000 commuters into the city every day. The event, and a Facebook forum scheduled the week after it, are intended to encourage residents to make submissions during the study’s extended public feedback period, which closes on Friday 28 June, before the report goes to the government.
But given the history of the line it’s possible nobody in the room will be alive to see the first train arrive in Doncaster.
Sam and Ross Gould are skeptical. They’re a married couple in their late twenties who live around the corner from the Civic Centre but neither of them have even heard about the study, despite longing for a public transport solution.
“Nothing’s going to happen in the next five years,” says Mr Gould. “They’re always going to get opposition from the people who want to put tolls on the Eastern and other freeways”.
They are not alone: the residents of Doncaster have watched the years go by and political leaders come and go as they’ve waited for a train line. The first serious proposals date back to the 1890s when the world was gripped by railway fever. But even after the 1930s Depression put a halt to the dream of an extensive rail network, the Doncaster line continued to be floated as an important and viable investment.
Early proposals suggested an extension from the Kew railway line, the closest and most logical route at the time, but the Kew line closed in August 1952 and the plans were shelved before re-emerging in the 1970s.
The Labor government abandoned initial excavation work for a line along the Eastern Freeway in the late 1970s, but plans for a line persisted in transport and infrastructure studies over the next four decades.
The Doncaster Rail Study is the most recent of these plans, and as a point of difference it is the very first independent study to concentrate solely on a detailed plan for a Doncaster Line.
At the public consultation Tim Gosbell presents three possible routes for the line, but he says their “preferred alignment” would start at the Doncaster Park and Ride – a high traffic bus stop which shuttles commuters to the CBD from a large parking lot at the Doncaster exit of the Eastern Freeway.
Mr Gould says despite needing his car to visit clients in his advertising sales role, both he and Mrs Gould – who coordinates a childcare centre in Clifton Hill – would use the line. They both currently drive to work and are unable to carpool due to their working hours and the location of their work.
And the impact of transport isn’t limited to work travel. “We drive and park in Kew to catch a tram to the footy,” he says. “It takes more than hour to get to Hoddle if you drive in, and it’s a nightmare once you get there.”
The Goulds are currently searching for a home, and say that access to public transport is one of the factors in their decision. Mr Gould says he feels they are in a better position than some, “we’re lucky enough to have relatively high incomes. But without that, there’d be no chance, you have to drive everywhere.”
Tim Gosbell is certain the Doncaster Rail Study is the best chance yet that Doncaster residents have of getting their rail line. But even he concedes, it’s still some time away.
“There are many years of planning work to be done before construction could commence and construction of a project like this itself could take several years,” he notes. “So it’s going to be some time before there’s a railway line to Doncaster.”
Imagine having a teacher–or better, a world-renowned expert–give you advice on an expensive project that you have been working on for years. The advice is sound, thoughtful and makes financial sense.
Then imagine you take the advice, crumple it into a ball, and toss it into a bin.
That’s essentially what the Auditor-General found that state-funded projects are doing with the state’s Gateway Review Process.
Projects like Myki, CityLink and the UltraNet are all mentioned in a damning report released earlier this month.
These failed projects are having an impact on Victorians across all sectors. For example, in 2010 the Victorian Government rolled out the UltraNet, an “online learning management system” which promised to lead Victorian classrooms into the future.
Three years later, many teachers like Rebecca Wallbridge are wondering, “What is the point?”
See Ms Wallbridge’s story here:
The process: traffic lights at six stages
The Gateway Review Process allows industry experts to give feedback on projects funded by the Victorian Government. Reviewers are certified through a process developed in the United Kingdom.
Projects are reviewed in six stages, and either get a “red’, “amber” or “green”. In theory, this process can save up to five per cent of the project value in the long run.
The process is compulsory for state-funded projects that cost more than $100 million, as well as for certain “high risk” projects. It has been in place since 2003.
The Auditor-General reported many problems, including:
Not all high-risk projects have done a review (example: MYKI)
Agencies can fail to act on recommendations
No single project has completed all required Gateway reviews
These findings help explain why Ms Wallbridge is exasperated with the UltraNet’s lackluster performance. After all, in 2012, the Auditor-General found that “While the Ultranet project received a Red rating for four of the five Gateway reviews conducted during the planning phase, in all instances, the project proceeded to the next phase, with little evidence that issues identified were rectified.”
Across sectors, across departments
Confidentiality is a key part of the process. Only two copies of the review reports are created and in general they not distributed beyond the project manager. Participants felt that making Gateway reports more widely available would make project staff more tight-lipped.
Given this secrecy, it is difficult to know exactly which projects get red lights. But the Auditor-General provided a chart showing that, over the last nine years, almost half the projects had only gotten one “green light”. This includes instances where projects re-submitted improved plans:
Source: Auditor-General
Notice that “six gates” is not a category in the above chart because no project has completed the full suite.
Not all Gateway reviews are completely ignored. Take the case of Circus Oz, which is relocating to a new building in Collingwood. The $18 million project’s first two reviews resulted in Red ratings, but its most recent review gave a Green-rating and identified that previous recommendations had been fixed. Circus Oz is now expecting its project to be delivered under budget.
Despite the known benefits of having an expert eye give feedback on projects, state government departments still give the review process a miss. The Department of Transport is the worst culprit:
Source: Auditor-General
Sophie Sturup, Senior Lecturer at The University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, is not surprised about these figures, given what she knows about infrastructure projects:
“Once a decision has been taken to do a project, it’s extremely difficulty to question that,” said Dr Sturup, “As a project manager if you change the plan, your costs are going to blow out…which means your project is a ‘failure’.”
But Dr Sturup thinks the process–when it’s done properly–helps project managers get a better prospective:
“Where projects take advice, they are improved. One of the problems of projects generally is that they tend to get very isolated and sit in their own little bubble… these kind of processes could really help the people who are running these projects … deliver the benefit that you intended to have.”
Who’s to blame? The role of managers and politicians
So are project managers the sole culprits? Dr Alan March, a planning expert at The University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning thinks politicians are also responsible:
“The politicians act rather like CEOs and take the credit or the blame for the projects. Because of that they tend to be quite controlling of how the rest of these large bureaucracies work.”
Dr March advocates for “a more technical approach where the politicians are somewhat distant from the detail of projects”.
Like Dr Sturup, Dr March believes that the Gateway process is worthwhile. He urged for patience:
“Once something is built, you have it for a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years. And once you have them, you’re stuck with them, whether they are good or bad. So allowed another six months or a year or two years, while it might seem terrible to a developer, could make a significant difference for the long-term impacts of that investment.”
The future: Fixing costly mistakes
The Department of Treasury and Finance, who oversees the review, previously claimed cost savings of at least $1 billion. The Auditor-General said that the Department cannot demonstrate that these benefits were reliably measured. When contacted, the Gateway Department declined to comment.
Although the financial benefits are unclear, the report still deemed the process worthwhile. The Treasury was told to monitor agency action and strengthen its quality assurance processes. In short, the report recommended that the Treasury start tracking problems and get tough on delinquent projects.
While the Victorian government is busy rescuing binned advice, its residents are living with a legacy of red-light projects–from broken MYKI scanners to faulty education technology.
Perhaps Ms Wallbridge explains it better than any of the experts. “The general human race, you’ve got to make mistakes.”
“Most of the time the ideas are alright but maybe they’re not talking to the right people…That would make it a lot more effective and would save investing all this money into something that’s just going to fall belly-up.”
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