Travel agencies have gradually been disintermediated since the late 1990s as airlines and other travel companies began selling directly to customers online. In response, travel agencies developed internet presences and websites to allow online booking. While some travel can now be booked directly online, travel agents remain important for arranging complex trips, offering advice, and fully bonded packages. The market for travel agencies has declined since the rise of online booking, but some agencies have adapted by specializing in specific areas of travel or acting as travel consultants.

1. best travel agency in delhi
With general public access to the Internet, many airlines and other travel companies began to sell directly
to passengers. As a consequence, airlines no longer needed to pay the commissions to travel agents on
each ticket sold. Since 1997, travel agencies have gradually been disintermediated, by the reduction in
costs caused by removing layers from the package holiday distribution network.[8][9] However, travel
agents remain dominant in some areas such as cruise vacations where they represent 77% of bookings
and 73% of packaged travel.[10] In 2009, the market size for travel agencies experienced a sharp
decline, dropping from $17 billion the previous year to $14.5 billion.[11]
In response, travel agencies have developed an internet presence of their own by creating travel
websites, with detailed information and online booking capabilities. Major online travel agencies include:
Expedia, Voyages-sncf.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, CheapTickets, Priceline, CheapOair, Webjet, and
Hotwire.com. Travel agencies also use the services of the major computer reservations systems
companies, also known as Global Distribution Systems (GDS), including: SABRE, Amadeus CRS, Galileo
CRS and Worldspan, which is a subsidiary of Travelport, allowing them to book and sell airline tickets,
hotels, car rentals and other travel related services. Some online travel websites allow visitors to compare
hotel and flight rates with multiple companies for free. They often allow visitors to sort the travel packages
by amenities, price, and proximity to a city or landmark.
Travel agents have applied dynamic packaging tools to provide fully bonded (full financial protection)
travel at prices equal to or lower than a member of the public can book online. As such, the agencies'
financial assets are protected in addition to professional travel agency advice.
All travel sites that sell hotels online work together with GDS, suppliers and hotels directly to search for
room inventory. Once the travel site sells a hotel, the site will try to get a confirmation for this hotel. Once
confirmed or not, the customer is contacted with the result. This means that booking a hotel on a travel
website will not necessarily result in an instant answer. Only some hotels on a travel website can be
confirmed instantly (which is normally marked as such on each site). As different travel websites work
with different suppliers together, each site has different hotels that it can confirm instantly. Some
examples of such online travel websites that sell hotel rooms are Expedia, Orbitz and WorldHotel-Link.

2. The comparison sites, such as Kayak.com, TripAdvisor and SideStep search the resellers site all at once
to save time searching. None of these sites actually sell hotel rooms.
Often tour operators have hotel contracts, allotments and free sell agreements which allow for the
immediate confirmation of hotel rooms for vacation bookings.
Mainline service providers are those that actually produce the direct service, like various hotels chains or
airlines that have a website for online bookings. Portals will serve a consolidator of various airlines and
hotels on the internet. They work on a commission from these hotels and airlines. Often, they provide
cheaper rates than the mainline service providers as these sites get bulk deals from the service providers.
A meta search engine on the other hand, simply culls data from the internet on real time rates for various
search queries and diverts traffic to the mainline service providers for an online booking. These websites
usually do not have their own booking engine.
A travel agent may work for a travel agency or work freelance.[12]
With many people switching to self-service internet websites, the number of available jobs as travel
agents is decreasing.[13] Counteracting the decrease in jobs due to internet services is the increase in
the number of people travelling.
Since 1995, many travel agents have exited the industry, and relatively few young people have entered
the field due to less competitive salaries.[14] However, others have abandoned the 'brick and mortar'
agency for a home-based business to reduce overheads and those who remain have managed to survive
by promoting other travel products such as cruise lines and train

3. excursions or by promoting their ability to
aggressively research and assemble complex travel packages on a moment's notice, essentially acting as
a very advanced concierge. In this regard, travel agents can remain competitive, if they become "travel
consultants" with flawless knowledge of destination regions and specialize in topics like nautical tourism
or cultural tourism.[15]
Notes