Tourism companies reduce costs through co-sourcing models
Tourism and travel companies are increasingly looking for operational models that allow them to depend less on permanent hiring, adapt more quickly to seasonal peaks, and provide more stable customer support. One of the models mentioned more and more often in this context is co-sourcing, a form of cooperation in which an external partner does not take over only an individual process, but builds a dedicated team that works as an extension of the internal organization. According to data published by 24/7 Travel Partner Desk, companies using specialized co-sourcing teams in the travel sector recorded significantly lower agent turnover compared with the industry average. The company states that the reduction in turnover in the observed cases reached up to 95.3 percent, but these are data from the service provider itself, not independent industry statistics. Nevertheless, the trend clearly shows that the travel sector, faced with rising demand and simultaneous cost pressure, is increasingly turning to hybrid staffing and operational solutions.
Co-sourcing is not the same as classic outsourcing
Unlike traditional outsourcing, in which a certain job is entirely handed over to an external supplier, co-sourcing is based on closer integration of the external team with the client's existing business. In practice, this means that support agents, reservation specialists, change processing, cancellations, emergencies, or administration work according to the rules, systems, and standards of the specific travel company. Such a model can be especially important in tourism, where customer expectations change quickly, and communication errors can directly affect passenger trust. According to a Travel Daily Media report, 24/7 Travel Partner Desk bases its model on agents specially trained for the tourism sector, multilingual support, and stronger involvement in clients' business processes. In this way, co-sourcing is being positioned as a strategic partnership, not merely as a way to reduce wages or relocate call centers to countries with lower labor costs.
Such an approach is gaining importance because tourism companies must simultaneously preserve service quality and control the growth of operating expenses. Travelers expect quick answers, availability outside normal working hours, and the resolution of complex situations such as flight delays, itinerary changes, or extraordinary disruptions at destinations. If support is fragmented or poorly trained, savings can turn into additional costs through complaints, refunds, poorer reviews, and the loss of repeat customers. That is why newer models emphasize retaining knowledge within the team, even when part of the operations is formally performed by an external partner. In that sense, co-sourcing attempts to combine the flexibility of an external service with the continuity of an internal department.
The cost of turnover becomes a business problem
One of the main arguments for introducing co-sourcing is the high cost of employees leaving operational teams. According to Travel Daily Media, replacing one agent can cost between 50 and 200 percent of that agent's annual salary, when recruitment, training, reduced productivity, and loss of accumulated knowledge are taken into account. In travel companies, this problem is more pronounced than in many other industries because agents must be familiar with reservation systems, carrier rules, hotel terms, refund policies, special traveler requests, and crisis procedures. Every departure of an experienced team member increases the workload of the remaining employees, and new agents often need months to reach full efficiency. For this reason, reducing turnover is not only a human resources issue, but also a direct matter of profitability and service quality.
According to statements by Gerard Ariño, founder and director of 24/7 Travel Partner Desk, reported by Travel Daily Media, the goal is to build teams that understand the complexity of the sector and adapt to clients' needs. Such wording points to a change in how travel companies view external operational partners. Instead of short-term coverage of labor shortages, the emphasis is placed on longer-term teams, specialized training, and measurable performance indicators. In this model, external agents should not be replaceable labor, but carriers of operational knowledge who remain connected to the same client and its processes. If such continuity is truly maintained, companies can reduce retraining costs and mitigate the risk of quality decline during seasonal peaks.
Demand growth does not remove pressure on margins
The broader context explains why such models are appearing right now. According to UN Tourism data, about 1.52 billion international tourist arrivals were recorded worldwide in 2025, almost 60 million more than in 2024, confirming the strong recovery of global travel after the pandemic period. At the same time, a higher volume of travel does not automatically mean easier business for agencies, tour operators, booking platforms, and support providers. Inflation in tourism services, geopolitical tensions, changes in traveler habits, and rising expectations in digital channels create pressure on margins. Companies therefore seek to handle a larger number of inquiries without a proportional increase in the permanent number of employees. In such an environment, co-sourcing appears as one of the tools for scaling operations, especially in customer support and reservation processing.
Data from the World Travel & Tourism Council further confirms the size of the sector. According to a WTTC report cited by TravelPulse, travel and tourism generated 11.6 trillion US dollars of global GDP in 2025, accounted for 9.8 percent of the world economy, and supported 366 million jobs. Such scale means that even relatively small changes in productivity, employee retention, or the speed of processing requests can have a major financial effect. If, for example, the number of repeated customer contacts or the time needed to resolve a booking change is reduced, savings appear not only in wages, but also in fewer complaints and a higher likelihood of repeat purchases. That is precisely why operational efficiency is increasingly viewed as a competitive advantage, not only as an administrative cost.
Air traffic shows how unstable the environment is
The instability of costs and capacity is especially visible in air traffic, which directly affects a large part of tourism business. In its global outlook for air transport for 2026, IATA forecast passenger traffic growth of 4.9 percent, measured in revenue passenger kilometers, but also highlighted supply-side constraints, including a shortage of aircraft and a lack of labor. This means that travel companies may face a larger number of clients, but also more disruptions, more expensive capacity, and more difficult planning. When flights are delayed, routes change, or capacities sell out quickly, customer support becomes the key place where traveler dissatisfaction is resolved. Companies that do not have enough trained agents then risk slower reactions and higher costs of subsequent interventions.
In its spring forecast for the period from 2026 to 2032, Eurocontrol stated that European traffic in 2025 reached the 2019 level, with 11.05 million flights and an average of 30,263 daily flights. For 2026, however, the forecast was revised downward after the escalation of the crisis in the Middle East, so around 11.3 million flights are expected for the ECAC area, representing growth of 2.7 percent compared with 2025. Eurocontrol also warns of unusually high uncertainty due to geopolitical risks, macroeconomic volatility, and instability in energy markets. For travel companies, such an environment means that operational teams must be prepared for sudden changes in demand and capacity availability. More flexible work organization models are therefore becoming more important, especially for companies operating in multiple markets and across multiple time zones.
Business travel further encourages centralization
Cost pressure does not come only from leisure travel, but also from the business travel segment. According to Cvent's Global Travel Managers Report for 2025, which is based on a survey of more than 1,600 business travel professionals in six global regions and 18 countries, 75 percent of respondents expected the volume of business travel to grow in 2025. At the same time, 71 percent of travel managers expected higher costs than in 2024, while budgets in many organizations remained under pressure. Cvent also states that 91 percent of travel managers simultaneously manage hotel procurement and meeting or event space, indicating increasing centralization of travel and event programs. Among organizations that jointly manage these areas, 83 percent of respondents said that consolidation resulted in savings.
Although Cvent's research primarily relates to corporate travel buyers, its findings explain why service providers throughout the chain are seeking similar forms of rationalization. If clients want lower costs, better reporting, and faster support, travel agencies and technology platforms must have operations that can keep pace with such requirements. Co-sourcing can help when it enables specialized teams to be deployed according to workload, language, market, or type of inquiry, without the need for the company to permanently hire for every possible combination of needs. But the model is not an automatic solution. Its effectiveness depends on the quality of training, clear service-level agreements, data protection, integration with reservation systems, and the partner's real ability to take responsibility for results.
Savings depend on the quality of implementation
The greatest risk with co-sourcing is that the model is reduced to cheaper labor, without real integration and without sufficient product knowledge. In that case, short-term cost reduction can lead to long-term damage: slower complaint resolution, inconsistent information for travelers, greater burden on the internal team, and weaker control over the customer experience. For this reason, a more professional approach requires external agents to have access to relevant knowledge, clear escalation procedures, and continuous feedback from the client. It is also important to measure not only costs per working hour, but also inquiry resolution time, repeat contact rate, customer satisfaction, and impact on revenue. Only then can it be assessed whether co-sourcing brings real business benefit or merely moves costs from one line item to another.
For travel companies, the issue of protecting personal and payment data is especially important. Support agents often have access to itineraries, passenger data, booking numbers, communication about special needs, and sometimes sensitive information related to travel changes. A model in which an external partner works as an extension of the internal organization must therefore include clear security protocols, access restrictions, and compliance with relevant regulations in the markets where the company operates. Operational flexibility must not come at the expense of traveler trust. Successful co-sourcing is therefore not only a staffing decision, but also a matter of risk management, technology, and quality control.
Technology changes the role of agents
Alongside co-sourcing, travel companies are increasingly investing in automation, artificial intelligence, and tools that give agents better context before they respond to a traveler. In its Global Report for 2025, Amadeus states that its platforms process billions of flight searches daily and a large number of transactions during peak periods, showing the scale of the digital infrastructure on which modern travel rests. Technology suppliers also emphasize operational efficiency, automated workflows, and the connection of different parts of the travel experience. In such an environment, agents no longer handle only simple questions, but increasingly take over more complex cases that automated systems cannot close on their own. Co-sourcing teams therefore must be sufficiently trained to use technology, but also sufficiently expert to recognize when human judgment is needed.
This also changes the cost calculation. If automation takes over simple inquiries, the value of a human agent is measured by the ability to resolve complex, urgent, or emotionally sensitive situations. In such cases, the experience and continuity of the team become even more important. A company that constantly changes agents may lose precisely the expertise needed for the most demanding situations. Co-sourcing can be effective only if it reduces turnover and simultaneously raises the level of specialization, not if it creates a new, remote, and poorly connected level of support.
A model that will grow, but with caution
The available data indicate that co-sourcing in the travel sector will continue to grow, especially among companies that want to expand support without a sudden rise in fixed costs. Strong global travel demand, the recovery of international arrivals, constraints in air traffic, and rising labor costs create an environment in which more flexible operational models become attractive. At the same time, claims about large savings and drastic reductions in turnover should be viewed in the context of the data source and the specific implementation conditions. Figures published by service providers themselves can be useful as an indicator of a trend, but broader assessment requires comparable, independent analyses by markets and types of business.
For travel companies, the key decision will not be only whether to use co-sourcing, but how to set it up. The model can bring benefits if responsibilities are clearly defined, if the external team is truly integrated into operations, and if quality is measured as strictly as with internal employees. It can help reduce hiring, training, and seasonal overcapacity costs, but it cannot replace a customer experience strategy. In a sector where traveler trust is often built at the moment when something goes wrong, the most important advantage will not be only a lower labor cost, but the ability of the right person to resolve a problem quickly, accurately, and calmly.
Sources:
- Travel Daily Media – report on reducing agent turnover through co-sourcing in tourism companies (link)
- UN Tourism – World Tourism Barometer data on international tourist arrivals in 2025 (link)
- IATA – Global Outlook for Air Transport in 2026, passenger traffic forecasts and supply constraints (link)
- Eurocontrol – spring air traffic forecast for the period 2026–2032 (link)
- Business Wire / Cvent – Global Travel Managers Report 2025 and data on business travel costs (link)
- TravelPulse / WTTC – data on the global economic impact of travel and tourism in 2025 (link)
- Amadeus – Global Report 2025 and data on technological infrastructure in the travel industry (link)