Travel Agents: We're Doing Very Well, Mr. President' - ABC News
To hear President Obama tell it, traditional travel agents have died at the hands of the Internet.
His assessment, made earlier this month in Atkinson, Ill., set off a mini-firestorm in the agent industry, which responded to the effect: We're doing very well, Mr. President.
The truth, however, is somewhere in the middle. While thousands of traditional brick-and-mortar agencies have gone out of business in the last decade because of do-it-yourself Internet booking and a bumpy economy, a significant portion of business trips continue to be arranged or overseen by traditional agents.
And a growing number of leisure travelers are saying they'd prefer to book travel the old-school way, too. A survey by Forrester Research earlier this year found 29% of leisure travelers saying that if they could find a good traditional agent to work with, they would. That's up from 23% in 2008, says Henry Harteveldt, former principal airline and travel analyst at Forrester.
"We show growing interest among consumers in using travel agents to help them with their trip planning and booking," Harteveldt says. "Planning and buying trips is getting so complex that it may soon require a Ph.D. to figure out the true cost of a vacation."
Obama was speaking at a town hall meeting on Aug. 17 when he used the travel industry as an example of how jobs are increasingly automated. "And one of the challenges in terms of rebuilding our economy," he said, "is businesses have gotten so efficient that — when was the last time somebody went to a bank teller instead of using the ATM, or used a travel agent instead of just going online?"
On Obama's side of the argument are July figures showing there are 14,380 retail travel agencies, including some online travel sites and corporate travel departments, accredited by ARC, an airline-owned company that provides financial services to the travel industry. That's down from 16,504 agencies in 2009 and 25,924 in 2002.
But the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), which represents agents, points out in response that U.S. travel agencies still handle more than 50% of all travel sold annually, which amounts to more than $146 billion in sales.
"While the president's intention surely was not to disparage the travel agency industry, his statement makes clear the need for greater education and understanding of the important role travel agents play in today's travel marketplace," ASTA CEO Tony Gonchar said. "Americans have the desire to travel, and they continue to turn to experienced travel agents to make these dream vacations a reality."
Predictions didn't come true
Chris Chiames, spokesman for the third-largest online travel company, Orbitz Worldwide, says predictions a decade ago were that traditional agents would disappear.
"And," Chiames says, "that simply did not happen and will not as long (as) travel agents provide customer value and support … whether it be finding the best airfares or the right hotel recommendations, the customer support in a travel emergency or the back-office support to properly manage travel costs."
For corporate trekkers, whose trips may involve several stops and must adhere to company policies on everything from preferred carriers to what justifies first-class travel, traditional agents play a vital role, Harteveldt says.
04 Sep, 2011--
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNE6dw8pNzYNmqFfb5YcHn4Fz4Dl4w&url=http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/travel-agents-mr-president/story?id=14408403
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