18 Sep FLOOR TO OUR MERCHANTS: EASY MARKET

Easy Market, among the leading enterprises in the travel sector, is a dynamic and growing business.
How was your company born and with what objectives?

Dario Ricchiari: Easy Market was founded in 2000 as the first consolidator of holiday offers for travel agencies, with the aim to ensure the development of innovative, technological, and cutting-edge services within the B2B market.

What company achievements are you particurlarly proud of?

Dario Ricchiari: Definitely, of Revolution: our innovative platform offering an intuitive and cutting-edge system for selling and distributing tourist services and products, including flights at negotiated rates, hotels all over the world, car rentals, excursions, activities and Insurance, Groups and Transfers.

Its system is based on agencies’ operational needs and is constantly being developed by our IT team in cooperation with the commercial offices and operational departments, thus not only regularly sharing a thorough vision and understanding of agencies’ context and requirements, but also regularly coming up with new functionalities while optimising the existing ones.

Technology is, in fact, a fundamental asset for the development of Easy Market’s core business. Our research is constantly focused on the offering of simple, fast and fun systems for the agencies and their business.

Easymarket has shown great resilience during the Pandemic. What tools and initiatives have been of particular support to you at such a critical time that has deeply impacted your sector?

Dario Ricchiari: One above all! The electronic Piggy Bank, initially launched to manage refunds during the Pandemic, has become an advanced payment tool with no transaction amount limits. On top of that, by recharging it via MyBank, an extra 1% immediate cashback reward is earned by agents.

Have you observed any particular trends in the first half of 2023?

Dario Ricchiari: Between January and March, volumes were above 2019 levels. April and May saw a slowdown in bookings, mainly due to inflation, public holidays and bad weather. As of June, trends are once again very close to those in Q1.

This year, you have already exceeded the results of 2019 in terms of volumes. What aspects did you focus on to meet such an important achievement?

Dario Ricchiari: We focused on three areas of activity that are crucial for us:

-Product: with regards to flights, we integrated NDC content of the major airlines and, with regards to hotels, we further increased coverage in terms of destinations and facilities.

-Assistance: we introduced the live chat support, thus opening a new, immediate and direct communication channel with our operational teams.

-Innovation: we encouraged greater use of secure and easy online payments with no transaction amount limit and moved forward with our 1% cashback promotion for agencies recharging their electronic Piggy Bank with MyBank.

Let’s talk about Easy Market and MyBank. When did you adopt this payment solution and what specific needs it responds to?

Mattia Mercuri: We have been successfully working with MyBank for 8 years now and established very positive relationships.

MyBank fully meets the needs of travel agencies by offering a secure and easy-to-use payment method that provides them with an alternative to credit cards.

For which of your services has MyBank made available?

Mattia Mercuri: Our agencies can use MyBank for paying all services that are available on our platform, including the purchase of single services (hotels, flights, car rentals, activities and transfers) and the recharge of their electronic Piggy Bank.

How has the use of MyBank by your customers evolved over time and what are the future prospects from your point of view?

Mattia Mercuri: Our 1% cashback initiative has significantly boosted the use of MyBank.

In recent years, the progressive reduction of commissions by scheduled airlines, and the rise of NDC fares that are not remunerative for segments, have led agencies to look for new solutions to recover profit margins. The special promotion for recharging the electronic Piggy Bank with MyBank is one of these solutions.

Agencies recharge the amount they need for their purchases on Revolution.travel in full autonomy, in real time, and immediately receive 1% cashback. This applies to the total transacted value, thus also including low-cost airlines.

Thanks to the 1% cashback initiative, many IATA agencies, which historically did not use our booking systems, have approached Easy Market and have become consolidated customers.

What projects and collaboration activities are you currently focusing on?

Mattia Mercuri: We will keep the priority on payment systems because we are convinced about the business opportunities that those provide. A few weeks ago, we made MyBank payments available to our partner agencies in Spain and Portugal: this service was exclusively offered on the Italian market until recent times. The feedback has been largely positive so far.