"Why Travel Agents?" is an open letter to the media written several years ago by Joel M. Abels (1926-2007). Mr. Abels was editor and publisher of Travel Trade Publications and CEO of Travel Trade Productions in NYC. Mr. Abels was a man I wish I had met. It seems he did the travel industry a great service and was a widely respected individual. You can read more about his accomplishments by clicking on the link at the end of this post. For now, I would like to share with you his letter "Why Travel Agents".
Taking the
inevitable ravel out of travel, and making it easier for both pleasure travelers
and business travelers to make their travel arrangements, is something which
retail travel agents have been doing for them for the last 75 years.
This fact
was driven home to virtually everyone traveling in the immediate aftermath of
“9/11”, when flight schedules were disrupted nationwide and worldwide, and
airline passengers scrambled to return home to nervous loved ones.
The
overwhelming majority of these passengers, those who had booked their air travel
arrangements through their local travel agent, were able to call their travel
agent who rebooked their flights for them, almost immediately, by telephone.
Meanwhile, those unfortunate travelers who had made the mistake of booking their
own flights, either directly through the airlines or via one of the new Internet
ticket selling “monsters”, in most cases found themselves stranded, waiting on
long airport lines attempting to rebook their flights — often unsuccessfully or
only after extensive delays.
Most of
today’s American travelers aren’t even familiar with the post-World War II
“do-it-yourself” syndrome, and have been raised to believe that professionals do
it far better than “do-it-yourselfers”. This is why, until recently, some 90% of
all those who flew made their travel arrangements through a local retail travel
agency. At least 75% of today’s air travelers still do, despite the inroads of
highly publicized Internet giants such as Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and other
so-called “10,000-Pound Marketing Gorillas”.
When it
comes to cruises and tours, over 90% of today’s cruise and tour passengers
continue to rely on their local travel agent to help them select either the
right ship or the right tour, and at the right price, which is best suited to
their personal tastes, needs and pocketbooks. The overwhelming majority of
pleasure travelers have learned that local travel agents really care, and go to
great lengths to get them the best deal on the best travel products and services
which suit them best.
Virtually
every cruise line and tour operator is dependent on travel agents to sell its
wares and to keep their customers happy by correctly matching clients to the
right cruise or tour package.
But, if
travel agents are really so indispensable, and if leisure and business travelers
find their services so time-saving and, in most cases, so cost-saving, why the
rush to write them off? Why is the obituary for the travel agent industry being
written about and talked about with increasing frequency in local and national
media?
The
simplistic reason being advanced, one which is being encouraged by the airline
industry in its effort to eliminate payment of commissions to travel agents, is
that travel agents are no longer needed in today’s “Age of Technology”.
Of
course, they are not needed if you have the time and patience to spend 30
minutes to an hour on the Internet making your own airline ticket arrangements
and feel confident that an impersonal Internet provider will get you the best
ticket at the best price.
And, one
other thing — ticket yourself if you are confident that you won’t be the one in
approximately every three airline ticket buyers who finds it necessary to
reticket for any of a myriad of reasons. Because, if you are one of the latter,
the odds are that you will never want to be a ticket-yourselfer again. Either
the additional cost or the added time and aggravation will convince you of that.
Mainly
overlooked in all of the discussions about the future role of the retail travel
agent is the inescapable fact that travel agents are truly the “Ultimate Search
Engines”. Today’s new breed of travel agents, and there are over 250,000
accredited travel agent sellers nationwide, use all of the tools of the Internet
and of modern technology to provide their clients with fast, accurate, low cost,
knowledgeable service.
Professional travel agents have the ability to provide present and future
customers with far better information, and far superior service, than any
dot-com mega monster is capable of coming up with. In brief, why should any
potential travelers waste hours searching the net for either new travel ideas,
travel bargains or travel values when, for a modest airline ticket service fee,
his or her local retail travel agent is a far better search engine for this task
than either Google, Yahoo!, Lycos or any of the others out there.
For as
long as travel agents can continue to do it better, and get you the best deal,
neither the airlines nor the mega Internet monsters will write their obituary
for them. Because, as the American Society of Travel Agents proclaims, “Without
a Travel Agent You’re on Your Own”.
To read more about Joel M. Abels and his wife, Lenore please follow this link:
Travel Trade Headline News
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