DERPART continues to focus on growth with Strategy 2030: acquisition offensive, lead strategy and innovative programmes

New franchise partners, acquisition of major business travel customers and additional service offerings: All signs point to growth at DERPART. DERPART Managing Director Thomas Osswald wants to continue this positive development with his strategy, which includes the acquisition offensive that has already begun, new services and technologies and the continuation of digitalisation. The medium-term goal is to gain eight to ten franchise partners for the company each year. A digital lead strategy under the leadership of Senior Vice President Andreas Weber will also help to attract and retain potential customers for the travel agencies. A realignment of the training programme is intended to counteract the shortage of skilled workers and strengthen the promotion of young talent.

"We are starting 2025 with a well-filled pipeline - both for the business travel sector with potential new customers and in the franchise sector with potential new partners. The focus for the coming year will be on acquiring these customers, as well as introducing further service offerings and continuing digitalisation," says Osswald.

Win new customers online: reise-spezialisten.com
With its new lead strategy, DERPART is taking a holistic approach to acquiring online customers for its travel agencies. An intensive analysis of the social media accounts of independent travel agencies clearly shows that acquiring new customers via social media is not effective for 99 % of owner-managed travel agencies. Travel agency websites are also proving to be less suitable. Instead, DERPART focuses on a digital niche and combines travel expertise with personalised advice.

The reise-spezialisten.com platform combines the expertise of experienced travel experts with modern technology. "We will continue to expand the platform developed by DERTOUR travel agencies together in 2025," says Andreas Weber, Senior Vice President at DERPART. Instead of presenting the agency as a purely offline booking location, the website will address customers who are travel-savvy but travel agency-averse. The focus is not on the travel agency, but on the travel expert who is the ideal personal advisor for the desired round trips and long-haul holidays. Travel interests and key data are queried via the lead route on the website and initial inspiration is created with AI support; the customer can then contact the expert at the DERTOUR or DERPART travel agency via various communication channels. The initial inspiration step is particularly important in order to transfer the online searcher's transfer performance to an offline channel, Weber continues. The customer should not have the feeling of wasting time. "This model creates a perfect link between digital reach and stationary advice and has already achieved great results for the DERTOUR travel agency team," Weber continues.

Realignment of training programme
Further training programmes are a decisive factor in retaining talented employees in industries with a high shortage of skilled workers. DERPART is therefore expanding its training programme. For example, a cooperation with a university operating throughout Germany and a Young Talents network for employees under 30 are on the agenda for 2025. "Our aim is not only to retain talent, but also to make a sustainable contribution to securing young talent in the industry," explains Weber. The focus is on an attractive training programme for every career phase in order to ensure the quality of advisory services in the travel agencies in the long term. There are learning blocks that have been specially developed for career starters, but also for more experienced travel agents and experts with very long professional experience. A special advanced seminar is aimed at prospective office managers who aspire to become successors in the travel agency.

DER BUSINESS Travel: Winning larger customers
DER BUSINESS Travel (DER BT) also has pleasing figures to report: "We are able to generate significantly larger customers than before," reports Katja Vortmann, Vice President of DER Business Travel (DER BT). In addition to the global medical technology group ERBE, current DER BT customers include Banijay, one of the world's largest production and distribution groups for television and digital content. This is mainly due to the reorganisation of the business travel sector, but also to the use of OBE (Online Booking Engine) and the competent OBE support provided by DER BT experts. This makes bookings easy and uncomplicated.

Overall, DERPART will continue to focus on digitalisation and innovation in the future. The DORS (DERPART Operating Reporting System) control tool developed by DERPART has been in use in Business Travel since July. "The unique dashboard for visualising flight revenue and incentive target achievement makes it even easier for our business travel offices to achieve common goals. We want to start piloting the system as early as the first quarter of 2025 so that we can also display tourism sales on a daily basis and provide fully automated management recommendations with stored commission models," says Osswald. RoboDER will also be used in the DER BUSINESS Travel travel agencies. The tool automates recurring tasks such as creating travel plans, minimises errors and leads to a faster and more efficient way of working. RoboDER also enables individual adjustments such as personalised travel plans with branding options and full cost control. A rate optimiser also ensures the targeted setting and checking of company rates.