What are the pros and cons of pro travel network?

Question

What are the pros and cons of pro travel network?

Answer 1

Alot of fairly new businesses are in the negative for a while.  What i did notice is that the company is growing at a very rapid pace.  Almost doubling revenues  year after year.  Also, you dont have to be on the same level of Expedia and the other sites to still be a good company.  You have to start somewhere.

*Pro Travel is conducting a relatively young direct-to-consumer service business that leverages the home-based business concepts with the travel industry. Pro Travel believes they offer one of the most unique and comprehensive independent travel agent training packages in the travel industry. Pro Travel currently supports more than 13,500 independent travel agents and 5,800 independent representatives throughout North America. Pro Travel has established strong relationships with travel providers for cruises, air travel, hotels, and auto rentals. Evidence of the strength of these relationships is seen in Pro Travel’s increasing booked cruises with Carnival Cruise Lines for 2007 by over 91% since 2006. Pro Travel’s revenue continues to increase on a comparable quarter basis; total revenue for six months ended December 31, 2007, increased 197.1% to $2.1 million from $708,552 for six months ended December 31, 2006. Through the last six quarters, Pro Travel’s revenue has been over $2.0 million for each quarter. Its balance sheet is clean and strong with no long-term debt and a current ratio over 2 to 1. We reiterate our Speculative Buy rating and our $2.00 price target.*

Answer 2

Tell us more about what a pro travel network would provide to the consumer.....what are your thoughts and then we can give you thoughts about whether or not it would be well received by us.

Answer 3

Are you referring to protravelnet.com?

Their website is rather vague. It sounds like they will set you up as an "independent travel agent" with a customized website. There is no mention of what types of services they provide or what sort of competitive advantage they provide.

Cons: a). There may not be much money in this unless you are successful at selling tours and cruises. Airlines don't pay commissions anymore and that is what many customers want. Hotel and car rentals still pay commission, for the moment, but it doesn't amount to much unless the hotel is very expensive or the trip is long. You get to keep 75% of the commissions on what you sell, but that won't help if your sales don't generate much commission. b). The website is vague about how the program works and how much they charge. c). The company is very small and not doing well financially. A quick check of Yahoo Finance shows negative profit, operating margins, return on equity, return on assets, EBITDA, and earnings. That's not the mark of a successful company. d). Their own website does not mention any prior travel industry experience in the biographies of their corporate officers. That's not the type of people who I would trust my business with.

One question that I would definitely ask them is how this dinky little company plans to compete with well-capitalized, well-known, and trusted websites like Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, and many others?  Why should customers buy from your website instead of theirs? What special products and deals do they have that the others don't so that customers will buy from you?

Pros. Beats me. I can't find any.