Travel Pros Make a Come Back as the Number of Web-Booking Leisure Travelers Drops

(Dive Travel Business News - April 25, 2011) -- Despite predictions that the demise of the travel profession is all but arrived, travel professionals are experiencing an unprecedented come-back.  With natural disasters causing flight cancellations, revolutions putting tourist destinations off limits, and airline and rental car agencies confounding travelers with increasingly complex fees, vacations are becoming increasingly difficult to plan and execute.  On top of this, the Internet generates so much information that it has managed to confuse consumers trying to plan their own vacations.

A recent article in The Washington Post touts consumers are increasingly turning to travel professionals to handle their travel needs. Travelers are on information overload when it comes to planning their own trips. A study by Forrester Research found that the number of leisure travelers who enjoyed using the Web to plan and book their vacations dropped from 53 percent in 2007 to 47 percent in 2010.

Travelers “don’t have hours to spend on research to compare multiple flights, multiple cruises, multiple packages,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Forrester Research. “It’s not unlike doing your taxes. Depending on who you are, what your priorities are, there are some people who will choose to do it themselves or to use a professional.”

In 2001, there were 37,981 travel agencies, according to ARC, a company that provides financial services to travel agencies, airlines and travel suppliers. As of March, there were 16,564. Lauri Reishus, vice president of operations for ARC, said that much of that decline is due to the consolidation of agencies.

The travel agents who have survived have had to change their modus operandi. Airlines used to pay them commissions, but not anymore. To make up for that, most agents now charge fees in addition to receiving some commissions from cruise or tour operators. The average fee agents charge for buying a plane ticket, for instance, is $36. Of the 111,000 travel agents in the United States, 28 percent are now home-based, and to compete with online travel sites, they have to be available to their clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And most now have specialties.

“Consumers are looking for specialists. They want a destination wedding specialist, an Africa specialist, a Puerto Rico specialist,” said Tony Gonchar, chief executive of ASTA.

The travel agent’s comeback doesn’t mean that online travel booking is losing its luster. PhoCusWright, a travel-industry research firm, predicts that global online travel booking will grow 11 percent in 2011 to $284 billion and 10 percent in 2012 to $313 billion. By 2012, one-third of the world’s travel sales will be booked online.

The online travel community would argue that it has formed a symbiotic relationship with brick and mortar travel agents. Most travel agents use online tools to book their travel. Often, these are sites that the average consumer doesn’t have access to. Orbitz, for instance, has developed Orbitz for Agents, which gives more than 7,500 offline agents special access to its inventory.

“It’s no longer a case of us versus them,” said Brian Hoyt, vice president of corporate communications and government affairs at Orbitz. “The line is blurred.”

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