NEW YORK -- Valarie D'Elia, a member of the fledgling Orbitz Consumer
Advisory Board, was cruising on fam trips with her travel agent
parents when many of her peers were still in strollers.
Today, D'Elia's new role with the controversial airline-owned
site -- which many agents fear will deflate their businesses --
places her in an interesting position, given that her family has
owned agencies and been in the travel business since 1902.
Valarie D'Elia's dad, Paul D'Elia Jr., still drums up business
for his wife Rita D'Elia, who is an outside agent selling groups,
honeymoons and Amtrak vacations in association with Keeley Travel
Depot in Bridgeport, Conn.
The seeming-conflict between Valarie D'Elia's Orbitz position
and her family history doesn't seem to bother her.
"To me, Orbitz is a travel agency," said D'Elia, sitting in the
offices here of WOR 710 AM, the base for "The Travel Show," her
nationally syndicated radio gig. "It's really the next-generation
travel agency.
"I think my great-grandfather would be proud of me and not
surprised at all because my family is very entrepreneurial," D'Elia
added, as she plotted her next round of monthlong
continent-hopping, which she does for her radio show, her New York
News cable television program and her travel video production
company.
"And I think we have shown through the generations that we have
really moved forward."
D'Elia's great-grandfather, Frank D'Elia, began selling
steamship tickets to immigrant railway workers out of his
Bridgeport, Conn., bar in 1902. Passed from generation to
generation, the travel business that emerged had grown to four
D'Elia Travel offices (three in Bridgeport and one in Trumbull,
Conn.) by the time they were sold in 1980.
Today, Valarie D'Elia, a travel journalist, is continuing the
tradition. Sometimes wearing shades and slinging a video camera
over her shoulder, she's in Tahiti one week, France the next,
shooting footage for her production company or doing on-location
broadcasting.
Several decades ago, the D'Elia Travel "commercial division," as
it was known, was among the first in southern Connecticut to use
the Sabre system, she said.
Valarie D'Elia's agency experience precedes the CRS era. In the
1960s, around the time of her first cruise, which was on Holland
America's Nieuw Amsterdam, Valarie D'Elia, then age 5, helped her
mom at the family travel office in Bridgeport's Stratfield
Hotel.
In the mid-1970s, in an era when e-tickets were as far-fetched
as palm-size cell phones, the high school student worked part-time
in the Trumbull agency, doing the payroll and other paperwork.
"I went down after school and I would hand-write people's
tickets and I would do the itineraries," D'Elia said. "They had
these itinerary pages, and from there I would write out the tickets
under the supervision of my mother."
D'Elia, who admits "there's something of a gypsy in me," was
always more attracted to the travel itself than agency
operations.
But one theme -- customer service -- stands out in her
recollections -- and it relates to her tenure as an in-house
consumer advocate for Orbitz.
"It was intense being in the family travel business," D'Elia
said. "It was nonstop. It was 24 hours. My parents were getting
calls in the middle of the night from people who were out on a trip
and something was wrong with their room."
"It was all-encompassing," D'Elia added. "They jumped and they
had a very successful business with these four agencies. They were
completely dedicated and they really went to great lengths."
As one of the Orbitz consumer panel's half-dozen or so members,
all of whom receive consulting fees from the company, D'Elia said
she's aware that some consumers experienced problems with the
site.
"The launch was one of the largest e-commerce launches in the
history of the Internet," D'Elia said, defending some of the
glitches. "And, there was $100 million booked during the first
month. That volume was beyond what they had expected."
An Orbitz spokeswoman said the site's bookings are 40% more than
initial projections, although she declined to specify what those
targets were. The spokeswoman indicated that Orbitz's third-party
call centers in Florida have been expanded from "under 100" staff
members to 275.
With customer service a priority, Con Hitchcock, chairman of the
Consumer Advisory Board, and D'Elia concurred in separate
interviews that they are satisfied with their access to Orbitz
management.
They said several of the board's design and navigation
suggestions have been incorporated into the site. Regarding
additional changes and input, the board will meet quarterly, with
the next meeting in early October.
As panel members, Hitchcock and D'Elia promote Orbitz and see
themselves as being sort of a consumer early-warning system within
Orbitz rather than having an adversarial relationship with the
company. Don't expect any consumer boycotts or sit-ins here.
"It's a later-generation model of consumer advocacy," said
Hitchcock, a lawyer who formerly worked with a Ralph Nader-founded
consumer aviation group.
As for some of the more controversial questions about Orbitz,
D'Elia believes potential airline collusion is "a dead issue at
this point" because of the Department of Transportation's approval
of the site launch.
"It's owned by the airlines, but you have 450 airlines that are
displayed," D'Elia said. "You have more choices than you would on
the competition. I don't look at it as just five airlines. There
are also cruise lines; there are also hotels. It's a full-service
travel agency."
Grasping a copy of a receipt from her great-grandfather, dated
Jan. 26, 1915, for nine prepaid steerage passenger tickets from the
Italia Societa di Navigazione a Vapore in Boston, D'Elia said
today's agents need to reinvent themselves.
"I don't think travel agents would want the business that comes
to Orbitz," she said. "These are real quick trips and weekend Web
fares. What kind of commissions are they going to make from
that?"
Valarie D'Elia's mother, Rita, meanwhile, has reinvented her
work style, even as she retains some of her longtime clients.
"I know mostly about every destination," Rita D'Elia said. "When
I work on an appointment, I get on the Internet to refresh my
memory."
"Travel agents will always adapt," said Rita D'Elia, who refers
to her globetrotting daughter as Miss Marco Polo. "Instead of doing
point-to-point, agents have to rethink the way they do
business."