Digital booking makes capacity accessible to smaller forwarders

[caption id="attachment_70324" align="alignright" width="400"] Photo/ Lufthansa Cargo[/caption] Digital booking has become a helpful tool for small- and medium-sized freight forwarders (SMEs) to more easily access airline cargo capacity. However, SMEs are still finding accessibility strained by allotments and charter services made by larger enterprises. “In the beginning [of the pandemic], it was tough to find space as a small or medium forwarder,” Stig Arihl Arildslund, airfreight manager at Denmark-based Bendix Transport, told Air Cargo World . “Competition actually started because a lot of the bigger forwarders have now chartered their own flights, moving some of the freighters into their own business.” As a result, the charters have moved capacity away from the market where SMEs would be able to book capacity, he added. Moritz Claussen, co-founder and managing director at Germany-based cargo.one, classifies SMEs as companies classified as one of the top 50 freight forwarders. With that in mind, roughly 70% of bookings on cargo.one are made by SMEs, with the remaining 30% coming from the larger freight forwarding companies, Claussen told Air Cargo World . "It’s always underestimated how difficult it is for smaller freight forwarders in the market to have access to capacity,” Claussen said. “If you look at a traditional process, the way you gain access to capacity is, you either call someone — a GSA or a sales office at an airline — or you’d send them an email. “But if we look at the past 18 months, [or] even prior to that, airlines will prioritize based on how big an account is,” Claussen said, “and what that leads to is that a lot of the smaller and medium-sized freight forwarders are just not getting the same access to capacity with the airlines than the very big guys are.” While there are many benefits to digital booking, including accessibility to capacity SMEs would otherwise not have, Arildslund noted that a lack of belly space and the strapped market are leading to sky-high rates and reduced capacity that is almost always immediately sold out. This is true even for portals like cargo.one, or direct booking platforms from carriers like Lufthansa and KLM, he said “We have to expand the number of airlines to increase the number of e-bookings,” said Bendix’s Arildslund. “Larger airlines, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, [offer digital booking], but they’re not covering all of the world and they can’t be competitive at all lanes, so we need to have more airlines either through [platforms like] cargo.one or by creating their own digital platform.” Despite the issues caused by the current competitive market, e-booking has been a useful tool for smaller freight forwarders throughout the pandemic. In addition to convenience, the dynamic rates, instant booking, tracking and transparency, digital booking platforms provide a way for SMEs to deliver quicker solutions based upon concrete information — rather than estimates. This encourages return business from clients, Randy Fronenbroek, export manager at Netherlands-based Falcon Logistics, told Air Cargo World . Falcon Logistics, which specializes in the transport of dangerous goods, completes around 75% of its booking digitally, whether through WebCargo, cargo.one or direct e-booking tools from airlines like KLM Cargo. “Normally, the big players in [the] market, like the big network agents, of course they have all the allotments ... because they have got much more freight [to transport] than we do,” Fronenbroek said. Consequently, the space that remains gets left to the small- and medium-sized enterprises to “fight amongst each other” to obtain, he said. “And now with the online booking tools, you book and it’s confirmed, and for the small- and medium-sized enterprises, it’s a big plus.”

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