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We hear a lot of objections to measuring the

performance of your travel program so that

it can be the best in the world. We thought

we would address some of those objections.

"It takes our agency too long to document

what you ask for and it completely disrupts

their operations." Topaz completed a study

on the average time it takes an agent to

document what we ask for and the average

time per reservation was only 2.5 seconds.



"We don't have employee complaints about

our TMC or online tool, so they must be

doing their job." Just because employees are

happy with your TMC or online tool doesn't

mean they are being offered the lowest fares.

We don't just recommend auditing because

you are having a specific problem or complaint

with your travel program. We recommend

auditing your agency as a responsible business

practice to ensure accurate and ongoing

performance measurement.

"We have a good relationship with our

agency and telling them we are auditing

them will make them mad." Your agency

should not have a problem with a company

verifying they are doing their job. Would you

not review your employees work because it

would upset them? In fact, if your agency is

doing their job they should welcome an audit

with open arms and be excited for you to

receive the results. If an agency does receive

a low score they should be happy to have

mistakes brought to their attention to

improve for the future.



"Our agency scored a 97% six months ago,

so why would we audit again anytime soon?"

Just like you continually re-evaluate your

employees and services whether they are doing

well or not, you should also be re-evaluating

your agency to make sure they are performing

at their best. As we all know, the travel industry

can change tremendously in 6 months.


"If our agency sends you more records than

we agreed upon we can't afford to pay for

them." We have no problem allowing you to set

a maximum number of PNR's for us to audit.

We will stop auditing at that point even if extra

records are sent to us by your agency.

"We use online tools." We audit those too,

and just like a traditional travel agent, tools are

not perfect.



"We have locations all over the world."

We audit locations all over the world, and have

experience auditing in over 70 countries.

We think our agency will use extra agents

during the audit and focus on our account

so we won't get a true picture of how they

perform when they are not being audited."

We offer blind audits, which is an option that

allows us to audit without the agency knowing.



"We can't afford to audit 100% of our

records." We recommend doing a statistical

sampling.



"Audit is not real time." Topaz asks for all

records to be sent to us right after booking.

We have a 2-hour turnaround time on domestic

PNR's. International/global PNR's have a

24-hour turnaround time. This is the fastest in

the industry.



So, what are you waiting for? Call or e-mail us today.

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