Travel agent business on the upswing
The latest to find that travel agents are not only alive but possibly thriving is The New York Times, which wrote:
“Yes, they still exist, those people who until the mid-1990s booked about 75% of airline tickets and had as much power as God but then seemed at risk of extinction. In fact, many travel agents — or travel specialists, as they are now known — say they have seen an increase in business in the last year or so.”
One major reason is that travelers say they do not have the time or energy to scour the internet for the best deals. Agent clients also crave a personal touch that a disembodied voice in a call center cannot provide.
The story quoted a 60-year-old man who two years ago bought an airline ticket at Priceline.com. The day before he was to leave, he caught a vicious cold. He spent hours on the phone, he said, trying to find someone to help him change his flight. But he was unsuccessful and ended up throwing the tickets away.
“Going to the Internet is an absolute nightmare,” he said.
That is when he called his former travel agent at the Tzell Travel Group in Manhattan.
“She’s available for phone calls. She returns calls,” he said. “They take really good care of me, despite the fact that I’m not General Motors.”
Allen Kay, a spokesman for the Travel Industry Association, a trade group based in Washington, said travel agencies had realigned in the face of competition from online booking. “Travel agencies have gone back to their roots and focused on expertise,” he said.
This is not to say that online travel booking is on the decline.
Henry H. Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Forrester Research, said about 77 million of the nearly 141 million American adults who use the Internet and take at least one trip a year will buy their tickets online this year, up from 62.4 million in 2005. He estimated that 64 million people buy all their travel offline.
But, he said, “as the airline centers have scaled back their call centers and it’s harder to get help from the travel providers themselves, finding a travel agent who is knowledgeable and takes the burden off the customer is more valuable than ever.” He said bricks-and-mortar travel agents continue to outsell online travel agents for most airlines and hotels.
Report by David Wilkening
David
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