DID all you agents know your long-term job security is dependent on the survival of the holiday brochures you love to hate?
The advent of the Internet and more importantly digital TV threatens the high-street retailers’ role of providing low-cost distribution outlets for tour operators’ brochures.
Tour operators currently produce expensive and boring brochures, which merely consist of pictures, descriptions and prices relating to accommodation. Good travel agents guide and advise customers on what best suits their requirements from this range. But many agents are simply warehouses for their in-house operators’ brochures.
The brochures are currently produced on computers and sent electronically to the printers, so it doesn’t take much imagination to see that these will soon be delivered via the Internet and digital TV.
And it is digital TV that provides the major threat, since its broad band delivery technology provides an infinitely superior product for suppliers to sell their holidays.
The customers will be able to watch travel channels showing destination videos and then at the touch of a button call up digital brochures and pricing information. Customers will find what they want by using Internet-style search engines, to match holiday requests to specific properties and types of holiday.
And it does not have to be fully interactive to be successful. People will be just as happy to pick up the telephone to book once they have found the holiday they want.
If you no longer have to pick up a brochure from a travel agency then why bother with high-street shops? Discounts are available from other non-high street agents and the cost of producing brochures and paying commission to agents is relatively high.
By the way, if you work for a large vertically integrated multiples do not think you will be protected.
The requirement to deliver ever-increasing volumes to in-house operators is forcing your owners to lead the drive towards this brave new world irrespective of the impact on your shops. Just take a look at Airtours and Thomson’s Teletext activity if you do not believe me. Next it will be digital TV, as evidenced by Going Places’ launch on the Open digital TV channel last week.
Will the calls generated be answered by their high-street shops or call centres? I think I know the answer to that.
There is a future for high-street travel agents, but I think there will be dramatically fewer of them.
The survivors will be those who embrace the new technologies and use them to improve customer services.