Guest Comment: Domestic tourism – agents or internet for growth?
By destination management consultant Ken Male
Some leading players in the industry see the possibility of retail travel agents becoming more active in selling domestic holidays.
Call me a cynic – but is this the retail sector looking for opportunities to compensate for losing business to direct booking via the Internet, and can they really deliver bookings and make money?
It’s fine with established operators like Superbreak and Wallace Arnold, for example, but can they (or would they want to) deliver bookings to private, independent hotels?
A quick look at the finances makes the option look pretty unattractive. Take a weekend break for two people at an hotel charging £75 for the room per night. Total value £150 earning commission for the agent of £15. Not a big contributor to time and overheads for the agent!
The agent could reduce administration costs by taking the deposit as the commission, thereby removing the cost of raising a cheque, and the client pays the balance to the hotel. The risk is of a no show, as the client would only lose £15, when he sees the weather forecast and he thinks he will stay at home! Who will try to recover any cancellation charges?
A recent industry paper stated that the internet is used primarily for planning a holiday but only 16% of people used it to book a domestic holiday – well how much product is available because this actually seems a relatively high proportion when 90% of domestic holidays are booked direct?
The figures clearly indicate that the domestic tourism provider should be encouraged to provide bookable product online rather than seeing the travel agent as the untapped potential. They are not, of course, mutually exclusive and the tour operators offer some great product through retail outlets.
In its advice to the industry VisitBritain should clearly be telling the small businesses to develop their online information to provide on-line bookings too. The trend is already clear from the action of many of the big operators -over reliance on the retail agent would be investing in yesterday’s technology and for the small business it makes better financial sense.
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