Agents told to become Web experts

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.