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Future of Travel Agencies

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Can agents see Life after the Web?
This essay is to discuss what the future is for travel agents in today’s world, when internet services are so popular and easily accessible. It will give a brief view on the travel retail industry and developments within the traditional channels of distribution. This essay will also include the present issues that have had an influence on the industry.
Travel retail industry plays very important role in tourism. Travel agents are like a “communication bridge” between the suppliers and the customers. They work on a behalf of the tour operators providing travel services such as airline tickets, hotel rooms and train tickets. The financial risk of the travel agent is very low due to lack of stock. They do …show more content…

People want to have more freedom of choice while travelling. They often prefer to organize their time during the holiday exactly the way they want. Spending hours at the travel agent’s desk used to be the only way to arrange vacation for many travellers. Not anymore! Now customers can comfortably do the same job sitting in their own homes. All of that makes the future of the high street agents unsure. A lot of people confessed that they have not visited the travel agency for years. Online booking has been popular among the young tourists for quite a long time but now even the older generation started following them. According to report from 2005 presented by Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) about 44% of adult people did their research about the holiday online and 53% were predicted to use internet to book their trips online till 2007. What does it mean for the retail agents? Is the personal service from behind the desk close to extinct? According to the statement of First Choice spokesman the ways of booking holiday will remain balanced due to variety of customers’ demands. Some people will seek easy and quick access, the others security of purchasing products through travel agents. Similar point of view had Rob Freedman- head of marketing for Flight Centre UK. He reckoned that even though people often choose internet rather than high street agent customers who are planning to spend more money on their trips are

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