Travel Agency
With the vast increase in the number of tourists traveling all across the world, companies like travel agencies have flourished in the past few decades. These travel agencies sell products and services related to travel and tourism to the people on behalf of hotels, airlines or other larger tour companies. The most attractive of these offers are the package tours that they offer. These travel products sell great among the middle class people who go vacationing and want to travel about economically. Most of the travel agencies serve to assist and sell products to customers who go different tourist places for family trips or to the honeymooners. There are also a considerable proportion of them who are more dedicated to the business-traveling clients and they are specialized in that particular field.
A Britain-based company known as the Cox & Kings is considered to be the oldest travel agency which was established in 1758. The company used to serve people from the rich and affluent strata and used to sell travel products to them. However, the definition of modern day travel agency is entirely different. The modern day travel agency has really flourished after the end of the First World War around the 1920s with the establishment of commercial aviation.
The Travel Agency Operations
The most important function of a travel agency is to work as an agent to sell different travel products and services representing other suppliers. However, the company differs in a way that it doesn’t keep the product stock unlike other businesses. For example, package holidays or the airline tickets are bought from the supplier companies only when a customer orders the purchase. The holiday tickets are in turn provided to customers at a discount price. They usually keep an agency commission, which is about 10% but varies from one agency to the other. For travel agencies to be successful, it is important for them to bond with financial organizations so that they can protect themselves and their customers from potential commercial failures. In that process the agencies have no risk from failures and they can provide their clients with a refund or another comparable holiday. Today’s travel agents can be considered as the supermarkets for holidays where they provide brochures to their customers with a large number of holiday spots to choose from.
Different Types of Travel Agency
Travel agencies can be categorized into three different types: the Multiples, Miniples and the Independent Agencies. Where the Multiples include different national chains owned by giant international companies, the smaller ones focus in smaller regions or towns. The independent agencies are however are based on a special market. These companies focus on particular areas or groups or they focus on particular traveler towns or suburbs. They also concentrate on activities like sports, for example, when people have important football fixtures or perhaps an important match between rival teams.
Online Travel Agencies
As more and more people have the access to the internet nowadays, the need for travel agencies has declined as the airline companies have started to sell products directly to the customers online. As a result, many agencies have started their own website with details of the travel information. These websites use high end technology travel solutions which help them to deal with the latest updates and details of thousands of hotels, flights and car rental services. Some of these websites also provide options that allow the users to compare flight and hotel rates with other companies. The travel agencies have used dynamic packaging utilities, which has helped them provide services that are fully bonded at the same prices and sometimes even lower than the online booking sites. All the online sites work with different travel agencies, which provides them with more efficiency once a customer orders a ticket or books a hotel.
