It’s hard to think about new technologies that have been impacting the travel and tourism agencies without giving notice to the slowly diminishing trade of travel agents. The once vital planners of vacations are being replaced by online travel agencies. These relatively new sites offer low air-fares, the ability to easily compare multiple travel options, and book as a package (the package includes combinations of air fare, cruise tickets, or rental cars).
There are numerous of these sites floating around in the internet. Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, and Hotwire only scratch the big names. These sites have their benefits, most notably they save travelers money on fares, but there are instances where these companies do not have the benefit of the consumer in mind.
Recently, there has been a huge debacle between American Airlines and online booking agencies.
Writer Christopher Elliott describes it as, “airlines and travel agencies are squabbling over how they show you ticket prices. Agencies want to display it their way; airlines want to show you the prices the way they want. Neither necessarily has your interests in mind.”
The bottom line is that American Airlines is no longer giving low-fares to Orbitz and Expedia is not going to accept American Airlines’ low-fares for posting. The same deals will be posted directly on American Airlines site, they way they want the fares displayed.
The necessity to check the individual sites might become more of a hassle if a traveler is comparing tickets, but the airlines hope to be eliminating the third party and either cut the price for travelers or pocket more of the profit.
This isn’t really new news. Consumers and companies both flocked to the online travel agents when they found that they could eliminate commission prices that had originally been devoted to behind the desk agents. Now looking to save even more, companies are taking on the responsibility of booking.
My family has always liked to travel. I remember a time, I was quite little then, when we booked all of our big vacations through AAA. We had a folder and the agents knew our names and ages. The agents knew our preferences. They knew when the Armstrong family walked in there was probably booking to Disney World in it for them. It was easy, and my dad would remember later as taking a vacation from planning a vacation.
After the introduction of online travel agents, my family started to selectively use AAA for our vacations and went ticket scavenging to get the best air-fare on our own.
Now, we are in charge of our own planning almost entirely. We buy attraction tickets and lodging directly from the resort’s website, and buy our tickets through Delta.
Delta even gives us rewards for booking through them. My family travels enough to skip the long TSA line at airport security and check in kiosks. American Airlines is hoping to cushion the change for customers by offering their AAdvantage flyers double the reward points to be used towards future flights.
The internet has brought us much advancement in the way that we approach vacation planning, and recent events will further impact these. As individual companies take control of their own marketing and sales, it is will hopefully pay (literally!!)for travelers to stay alert to changes in how the travel industry is working.
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