Report by Isabel Choat
TRAVEL agents must become expert Internet users if
they want hang onto their customers.
Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers Malcolm Preston
said agents do not need to invest thousands of pounds in new technology to
survive but they do need to know what travel product is available on the
Internet so that they can stay one step ahead of their customers and provide
advice on useful sites.
“How often does a customer come in and say they have
seen something somewhere on the Internet? You can start to add value to
customers better than anyone else by getting to know the web better than them,”
he said at the ABTA convention in Kos.
Preston said that while consumers are more likely to
buy travel on line than any other product, research also shows that most people
would still rather deal with an agent directly. But he said that agents
shouldn’t take that as a reason to do nothing.