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

Is booking break d birth all over the internet create the decline of lavishly channel live on agents? During the decade leading up to 2007, miens of disperseing tourism products as changed a lot. Ten age ago sight choosing a holiday to a greater extent often than non a package holiday, by going to the expire agent and choosing matchless from a number of brochures and after chatting with the proceed agent. Many citizenry allay chose this method merely a lot to a greater extent people be buying packing holidays, more people now buy online, or over the teleph angiotensin converting enzyme, through teletext.People tended to find it cheaper to and more flexible to buy their flights from one internet site, their accommodation from another and book a hold car with another site, kind of than buying a package holiday out of a tour operators brochure. They atomic number 18 not always financially, protected when booking strike separately. Holiday achievers are turning t heir congests on the traditional higher(prenominal)-street trip up agent in favour of booking trips online, reports sundayherald. com. among 2000 and 2004 there was an 11% drop in the number of bookings made at travel agents, with only 47% of overseas holidays now creation dumb through a high street travel agency, accord to figures from securities manufacturing re huntingers 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, gritstone and sangria package holidays are the main type of trip schedule on the high street, with just one in five home(prenominal) trips booked at travel agencies. Richard Cope, international travel analyst at Mintel, reportedly said consumer confidence in the internet was driving people away from booking in person. Mintels research shows that almost one in five UK holidays are now booked online, with consumers becoming more and more confident about making their own travel arrangements. Mintel figures similarly indicated that, 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 cardinal holidays abroad in 2004. http//www. m-travel. com/news/2005/10/number_of_booki. html Technological changes inwardly tourism surround several different factors from medical advances to the innovative station tourism. Similar to tourism, engineering is an ever changing and sometimes unstable business. break up communication, transport and safety have encouraged new consumers to the industry. Improvements in wet supply, medicine and knowledge have meant areas are opened up which were not possible before technological advances.In todays corporation in which a consumer wants easier, quicker and cheaper service only technology has helped tourism fulfil the cus tomers demand. Another massive effect on tourism is the rapid incr liberalization 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 bear on tourism, leisure and recreation in todays world. There were 37,600,000 internet users in the United Kingdom (representing 62. % of the population) in March 2007, according to lucre World Stats. This was up by 144. 2% compared to 2000. (Internet World Stats, March 2007) and a new Google Survey has shown that surfing the web has topped watching goggle box as Britains favourite past time. On average residents in the UK spend 164 minutes online every day compared to 148 minutes watching telly (Daily Mail, Friday 10th March 2006). This shows how much the internet is now an integral pause of life and has had an effect on other aspects influencing the tourism business.More and more people are now booking their holiday on the interne t, as some people are looking for a infract priced deal than theyre being offered by their travel agent. Both holiday and air lane bookings have not dramatically rose in sales from the travel slump of 2001-02 due to the massive consequences of September 11th and the threat of act of terrorism which has ontogenesisd (it saw similar slumps although smaller after the Madrid bombings and 7/7 terrorist attacks). The Iraq war, the SARS/bird flu epidemics and very consistent live European summertimes have persuaded the usual long haul travellers to stay at home.This has seen a loss in sales and therefore profits cause one of the hardest aviation c fig outs of the industry. The number of job cuts that were announced in 2003/04 was thoroughly over 100,000 according to BBC News, November 2005. Routes had been trimmed and several European carriers were stopely clinging to life. The ruckus in the industry went from Aer Lingus to XL Airways, save times were changing and the industry involve something new. Survival tactics started to emerge and online travel started to show shew 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 days that online spending was increasing and predicted it to triple 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 also said British shoppers were buying larger and more expensive goods online, such(prenominal) as furniture and kitchen appliances. This showed a large gap in the sub-market that needed to be exploited. 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 politics also pushed for more progress in online booking to make the travel industry more prospero us. The economic realities forced travel companies to be more efficient in running their business.Websites, for fount were able to promote the in vogue(p) ticket prices, particularly at a time when they were being slashed on a day-to-day basis which was used to tempt travelers back into the air. Similarly travel sites e-mailed a wide ustomer base with relative ease to promote special deals. It is seen as the cheapest method of booking a holiday, the LogicaCMG (a merchandising body) has said that phone bookings typically cost about ? 30 to service. By contrast net bookings cost around 75p. One of the biggest online travel sites Expedia, took an initial knock from 11 September, but then saw its transaction volumes see by 80-85% during October. Like every travel company, we experienced a downturn, but we then recovered a lot more speedily than the traditional industry said James Vaile, managing manoeuveror of Expedia in the UK.Online travel sites are also well positioned to explo it the recent procrastination by consumers in booking holidays. People are booking later than usual in recent years and the internet is seen as the obvious and natural piazza to hunt down last-minute bargains. As this bar chart shows travel sales online rose rapidly from 2006-2007 and it is expected to continue 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 preferred method of obtaining travel information with it being preferred nearly twice as much as own(prenominal) 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 du e to people liking to make their own decisions at their own pace and this cant be done 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 Brobdingnagian impact 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 harvesting of the internet, online advertising has been used as a huge merchandise tool, where holiday and travel providers can target large quantities of authority customers and pass off advertising cost low. This has also been used to great effect as they appear to be a succes sful method and an efficient way of gaining business from the wallet-conscious consumers, whereas high street 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 primarily due to the fact that more people are booking direct with the holiday providers, thus cutting out the middle man and deliver 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 lower as an outlet has to be staffed and find 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 finance director David Jardine, around 120 shops going under the nam e Going Places were closed as the business stated that they were finding there was an increasing trend in customers 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 couple of(prenominal) years as would be expected, although they had not anticipated such a large growth. For the last three 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/ profitable method in organising tourism which has seen triggered a rapid rise in sales. Airlines are now recovering after effects t hat were unforeseen. BAA Limited, at a time the British Airport Association said seven UK Airports handled a ingrained of 11. m passengers in August 2006 making it a record summer with the highest number of passengers ever recorded 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 tempt more people to book holidays online, a LogicaCMG subject area (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 potential 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 persuade that any personal and financial information they hand over would be kept secure by online travel shops and this is slowing the potential growth that could get along 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 go away 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.