Is Booking Travel over the Internet Causing the Decline of High Street Travel Agents? Essay

Is meshing move everywhere the meshwork cause the decline of broad(prenominal) street go bad agents? During the decade leading up to 2007, ways of buying touristry products as changed a lot. Ten years ago people choosing a holiday more than practically than not a package holiday, by going to the trip agent and choosing peerless(prenominal) from a digit of brochures and later on chatting with the propel agent. Many people still chose this mode but a lot more people be buying packing holidays, more people now buy online, or over the telephone, through teletext.People tended to find it cheaper to and more flexible to buy their flights from one internet site, their accommodation from other and book a hire car with another site, rather than buying a package holiday surface of a tour operators brochure. They are not always financially, protected when date fit separately. Holidaymakers are turning their backs on the traditional high-street perish agent in favour of reservation trips online, reports sundayherald. com. Between 2000 and 2004 there was an 11% drop in the number of betrothals made at travel agents, with wholly 47% of overseas holidays now beingness reserved through a high street travel agency, according to figures from market researchers Mintel. Many people book breaks by phone, and just 31% of overseas trips were schedule in person in 2004, says the report. The research shows that traditional sun, sand and sangria package holidays are the important type of trip booked on the high street, with just one in five house servant trips booked at travel agencies. Richard Cope, international travel analyst at Mintel, reportedly said consumer authorization in the internet was driving people away from employment in person. Mintels research shows that well-nigh one in five UK holidays are now booked online, with consumers becoming increasingly confident or so making their own travel arrangements. Mintel figures alike indicated th at, overall, more holidays are being taken. In 2004 65% of British people went on holiday, compared to 62% in 2000. Some 44% of holidaymakers now take more than one holiday a year, up 14% since 2000.Altogether, Britons took 43 million holidays abroad in 2004. http//www. m-travel. com/news/2005/10/number_of_booki. html Technological changes within tourism surround several different factors from medical advances to the innovative home tourism. Similar to tourism, technology is an ever changing and sometimes unstable bloodline. Better communication, transport and safety hurl encouraged new consumers to the industry. Improvements in water supply, medicine and knowledge have meant areas are opened up which were not possible before technological advances.In nows society in which a consumer requisites easier, quicker and cheaper service only technology has helped tourism fulfil the customers demand. Another massive effect on tourism is the rapid maturation in online booking that has given consumers more opportunity to make a holiday. Through technological advances, online booking has been one of the biggest factors in affecting tourism, leisure and recreation in todays world. There were 37,600,000 earnings users in the United Kingdom (representing 62. % of the population) in present 2007, according to Internet World Stats. This was up by 144. 2% compared to 2000. (Internet World Stats, March 2007) and a new Google Survey has shown that surfboarding the web has topped watching television as Britains favourite past time. On thoroughgoing residents in the UK spend 164 minutes online every day compared to 148 minutes watching television (Daily Mail, Friday 10th March 2006). This shows how much the internet is now an integral part of life and has had an effect on other aspects influencing the tourism subscriber line.More and more people are now booking their holiday on the internet, as umteen people are looking for a better priced deal than theyre being offer ed by their travel agent. Both holiday and airline bookings have not dramatically rose in sales from the travel slump of 2001-02 imputable to the massive consequences of September 11th and the threat of terrorism which has increased (it saw akin(predicate) slumps although smaller after the Madrid bombings and 7/7 terrorist attacks). The Iraq war, the SARS/bird flu epidemics and very arranged hot European summers have persuaded the vulgar long haul travellers to stay at home.This has seen a firing in sales and therefore profits causing one of the hardest aviation crises of the industry. The number of job cuts that were announced in 2003/04 was well over 100,000 according to BBC News, November 2005. Routes had been slashed and several European carriers were barely clinging to life. The turmoil in the industry went from Aer Lingus to XL Airways, but times were changing and the industry needed something new. Survival tactics deviateed to leave and online travel started to show evi dence of bucking this gloomy trend.The Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), as cited in a May 21, 2002, Financial Times article had cited for many an(prenominal) years that online spending was increasing and predicted it to triad at the end of the decade. Looking at e-commerce data overall, the firm counted travel as the biggest online sector, followed by electronic products and apparel. IMRG in addition said British shoppers were buying larger and more expensive goods online, such as article of furniture and kitchen appliances. This showed a large gap in the sub-market that needed to be actioned. Online Travel Spend ($bn) Europe N. AmericaU. K 20002. 4 6. 4 0. 20015. 8 11. 00 1. 8 200212. 7 18. 7 3. 7 Source Datamonitor At the start of the boom these were seen as survival tactics by the airlines and the government also pushed for more progress in online booking to make the travel industry more prosperous. The economic realities forced travel companies to be more efficient i n running their business.Websites, for example were able to promote the latest ticket prices, particularly at a time when they were being slashed on a day-to-day basis which was employ to lure travelers back into the air. Similarly travel sites e-mailed a wide ustomer base with relative ease to promote additional deals. It is seen as the cheapest method of booking a holiday, the LogicaCMG (a marketing body) has said that phone bookings typically cost slightly ? 30 to service. By contrast net bookings cost around 75p. One of the biggest online travel sites Expedia, took an initial happen from 11 September, but then saw its transaction volumes recover by 80-85% during October. Like every travel company, we experienced a razeturn, but we then recovered a lot more quickly than the traditional industry said James Vaile, managing director of Expedia in the UK.Online travel sites are also well positioned to exploit the recent procrastination by consumers in booking holidays. People a re booking later than usual in recent years and the internet is seen as the obvious and natural place to hunt down last-minute bargains. As this bar chart shows travel sales online rose rapidly from 2006-2007 and it is expected to overlay to rise to over $30 billion. The consumers werent only using the internet to book their holidays but also to research and gain knowledge of the destinations they wanted to go to.The search engines were flooded with searches over cheap flights, accommodation and new destinations (as shown in the rankings). From the bar chart below it shows that web-search is the pet method of obtaining travel information with it being preferred n wee twice as much as personal recommendation, the second most preferred method. This is then followed by TV programmes, but the travel agents became the fourth option of consumers to collect travel information. Web-searches are high due to people liking to make their own decisions at their own pace and this suffert be do ne in travel agents where they are pushed, poked and pressured.This is unpleasant for the consumer and has changed the trend in which consumers went to travel agents for advice, whereas now they would rather use the internet. As this pie chart to the left shows the internet has had a huge shock on the booking of a holiday, with 79% of all booked holidays using the internet in the process. Also, the internet has seen a large increase in the number of last minute business as many tourists feel it is better-placed and they can search for the best priced, most suitable holidays or excursions.Furthermore, since the growth of the internet, online advertising has been used as a huge marketing tool, where holiday and travel providers can target large quantities of voltage customers and keep advertising costs low. This has also been used to immense effect as they appear to be a successful method and an efficient way of gaining business from the wallet-conscious consumers, whereas high stre et advertising receives less notice. Moreover, the internet has caused the high street travel agencies to close, therefore creating job losses within the businesses.This is mainly due to the fact that more people are booking direct with the holiday providers, thus cutting out the middle man and saving money by doing the research and booking themselves. This is usually done by using the internet or telephone booking where the overhead costs are much set out as an outlet has to be staffed and incur running costs such as electricity bills and also because of the larger volumes of people that are able to access the service. A recent example of this is was in 2001, when Airtours, the UKs largest tour operator had to cut one-in-seven of its high street branches in an effort to return to profitability.According to pay director David Jardine, around 120 shops going under the name Going Places were closed as the business stated that they were finding there was an increasing trend in custom ers wishing to book direct. On the other hand, online companies such as Expedia. com have seen their profits on the rise over the past a few(prenominal) years as would be expected, although they had not anticipated such a large growth. For the last tether months of 2001, Expedia saw its net income surge to $19m according to BBC News, compared with a loss of $2. 6m in the same quarter of 2000 and also the firms evenues were in excess of $80 million for 2001, over double that for 2000, showing how quickly it has established itself as an efficient internet booking service.So in conclusion online booking for travel has dramatically changed tourism in the world. It has provided a less time consuming, cost effective and an overall efficient/productive method in organising tourism which has seen triggered a rapid rise in sales. Airlines are now recovering after effects that were unforeseen. BAA Limited, formerly the British Airport connexion said seven UK Airports handled a total of 11. m passengers in August 2006 making it a record summer with the highest number of passengers ever enter over a two month period. BAA also revealed here was a 6. 8% increase in passenger traffic for the 12 months to August 31st 2006. Bigger discounts and better security could lure more people to book holidays online, a LogicaCMG survey (http//news. bbc. co. uk/1/hi/technology/3939035. stm) found. However, the future of online booking although seen as prosperous can also turn, but due to the recovery in airline business they are starting to hit back.Prices are starting to rise and now you must book early to get the best price. The same survey revealed that online discounts were still not high enough to tempt authority customers onto travel websites and that the process was still too complicated for some consumers. A serious issue with online booking is the fear of fraud. Consumers are not convinced that any personal and financial information they hand over would be kept secure by o nline travel shops and this is slowing the potential growth that could occur otherwise.The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) sees the online travel market having a long way to go before it replaces high street travel agents. ABTA estimates that by the end of 2007 online travel will be 17% of the UKs ? 28bn travel market but this growth will only occur if trends continue as it relies on steadily growing numbers of people happy to book holidays online and as well as improvements in technology and the creation of better websites by travel firms. Issues over security, faults and complications need to be solved if this method of booking is to prosper.The travel industry although brash will always be around due to the need and want of consumers to travel. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travels sake. The great affair is to move.