Ryan Saroli, CEO of Agencia Global

Agencia Global, an online booking tool that specializes in airfare, has gotten an upgrade, making the user experience for agents that much easier and efficient. In this week’s edition of Take Five, we sit down with CEO Ryan Saroli to get the scoop on what the booking platform does exactly, how it works, and why agents should try it out, all at no added cost.

For agents who don’t know, tell us a little about Agencia Global.

Agencia Global is an online booking tool that is free for travel agents to use. It was originally created in 2012, but was completely overhauled in 2017 to improve product, user experience and service levels. Our focus is airfare and our competitive advantage lies in our technology team. Our team in consistently solving problems for travel agents using technology. We deploy new tools on a regular basis that create solutions for agents. Recently we’ve rolled out tools that allow enhanced payment flexibility as well as unique tools to help agents add markup to their fares seamlessly and discretely.

Would you say Agencia Global is meant to complement GDS, or replace it altogether as an agent’s main means of searching and booking airfare?

Simply put, Agencia Global takes GDS content and makes it beautiful, intuitive and transparent for travel agents. We understand that many travel agents have a comfort level with GDS, but we felt that the traditional “green screen” needed a little bit of a makeover for travel agents of all experience levels. Our goal is to ensure that travel agents can begin shopping and booking airfare immediately once they’re registered with Agencia Global.

How do agents sign up for Agencia Global? Is it free? And what is your commission structure?

Registration is part of the user experience for us. Registration takes 2-3 minutes and we can usually go through the approval process in a couple of hours. There are no fees to register for Agencia Global, we do not charge any monthly or transactional fees, and we typically share over 90% of our contract incentives.

What differentiates Agencia Global from other platforms out there?

We get amazing feedback from our customers about our “hide your markup” tool as well as our “multiple credit card” tool. We’ve created technology that provides agents with flexibility when it comes to how they make money. We believe that travel agents should have the freedom to earn what they deserve, and we deployed technology that allows them to calculate and invoice their time at fair market prices.

What’s new with the company in 2020?

2020 will be exceptionally exciting for our entire team. We’re continuing to deploy new tools on our platform, enhance our service offering, and most significantly, expand internationally to markets in Europe and Asia. We firmly believe that with the support of our airline partners, we have a scalable product that can support travel agents across the globe.