TRVL.com’s founder says he wants to put the power of OTAs in the hands of agents

TRVL.com founder Jochem Wijnands says he has come full circle, completely overhauling his at-times controversial B2C travel booking site into a B2B platform that’s strictly for travel agents only, and free to join.

Wijnands is positioning the site as an online revolution, putting the power of the OTAs into the hands of traditional travel agents. “We want to put travel agents centre stage,” says Wijnands, adding that a number of retail groups in Canada have agreed to make the TRVL platform available to their agents.

Launched in Canada in early September, the site is already getting positive feedback from the trade, he says.

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It wasn’t always that way. The original TRVL.com was a B2C site that had consumers booking hotels and pocketing the commission.

By 2017 the site had alarm bells ringing at TICO, and TRVL.com, which was not registered with TICO, was barred from operating in Ontario. “Anybody who is selling travel in the province … must be employed by or otherwise aligned with a registered travel agency in the province of Ontario,” said TICO President Richard Smart at the time.

 

TRVL was originally launched in 2010 as an iPad magazine, the first in the world. Then Wijnands transformed it into the peer-to-peer B2C booking site, the one that generated pushback from TICO. He also co-founded Prss, which was bought by Apple in 2014 and turned into Apple News.

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