Selling a trip is a game. Keeping a traveller is a business.

I don't buy travel agencies. I buy recurring revenue.

The difference sounds academic. It determines the price.

An agency with five million in revenue from one-off bookings and an agency with five million from customers who come back every eight months are not the same company. They are not valued the same either.

I have been through this once from start to finish.

In fintech, we lived on projects. Well paid, predictable, easy to sell. And every January the count started again at zero.

When we switched to recurring revenue, revenue did not rise at first. The value of the company did.

That is exactly the shift I want to repeat in the travel industry.

That is why I don't start with an offer to buy, but with software.

The owner should first see where his value really lies. And he should start thinking as part of a group instead of as a single business.

What that means in practice:

• Twelve agencies all selling the same five destinations compete against each other. Divided up, each sells what it is truly good at.
• A DMC negotiates differently with one agency than with a group that brings it volume all year round.
• A customer booking individual travel is known elsewhere in the group as an existing customer. Today nobody knows that.

This is not an efficiency programme. It is a different business model.

And whoever makes the switch before the sale sells a different company from the one who waits.

What would your company be worth if half of your revenue were predictable?