Travel agency organization and analysis

Travel Agents Service

Customization and quality of service are essential for a successful travel agency. With all the competition available in this field, both by traditional means and through online organizations, satisfaction consists of providing the exact service required at a competitive price and with high efficiency. As studies show, even the ease of online travel service has its challenges, and one of them is traditional travel agents.

Travel agencies offer services that mostly consist of processing activities: First, promotional information is given to customers during pre-transaction services. Then the customers provide personal information and make payments for the transactions. Next, the information and payment is checked and processed and sent to third-party transportation and hospitality providers. Finally, during post-transaction services, the travel agents provide last-minute information and after-sales assistance to customers. The web is an ideal medium for such activities (Adamic et. al, 2001).

However, regardless that the web can be such a perfect medium, satisfaction is not guaranteed. In fact, according to a recent J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Independent Travel Web Site Satisfaction Study (CNN), the travel industry as a whole slipped in the rankings from a score of 810 out of 1000 down to 802. Six factors were examined to measure customer satisfaction: competitiveness of price, ease of booking, usefulness of the information, availability of booking options/travel packages, appearance/design of the website, and ease of navigation. Although 95% of reservations made online were error free compared to a year prior, this was apparently not good enough for travelers. Also, consumers thought that travel websites were some of the worst designed sites online. In other words, consumers expect an even better experience than travel sites can presently provide. Their expectations are growing more quickly than the industry can develop online services. Online travel agents are spending so much on advertising and product, they are not progressing technically at the speed as before.

Two research studies published this year show that consumers will buy travel how they want to, not how some website wants them to. The University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index report on e-commerce earlier this year, in a poll of 5,000 consumers that ranks online retailers, auctions, brokerages and travel companies, likewise showed that travel was the only category that slipped when it came to customer satisfaction in online booking (Fornell, 2007). On the other hand, every other category of e-commerce indicated an increase in customer satisfaction. Similarly, in a study of 60,000 Internet users, Forrester found that the number of people booking online travel has dropped by 9% from 2005 to 2007.

Apparently, found Forrester, people do not like to spend hours using search filters to sort through billions of pages. Also, these travel websites consumers want to talk to a person about their travel needs. Instead of typing in their needs into their computer and getting back generic suggestions, they would rather explain their needs to a person who will make recommendations and, most important, the reasons for them. The New York Times article said of the Forrester report: "This is a wake-up call for the industry. Customers are tired of spending two or three hours trying to find the airline or hotel or vacation package that meets their needs" (as cited in Murphy, 2007) www-staff.it.uts.edu.au Internet provides a powerful environment for the creation of virtual representations of tourism destinations allowing indirect experience that greatly surpasses the possibilities of traditional travel agents." However, social interaction with travel agents, their expertise and the possibility to save time on search can be of even higher importance. The authors suggest the best of both sides": the convenience of Internet should be combined with the convenience of a simplified decision making and collaborative booking from traditional travel agents.

Resources Cited:

Adamic L.A., Humberman B., Lukose R., and Puniyani a..(2001) Search in. Power Law Networks Phys. Rev. E, 6446135-46143,.