There's an internet saying that to succeed on the Internet you either have to be cheap or be a niche product. Consumer searches on the internet for travel destinations bear this out. 'Cheap flights' as a search term is ten times more popular than 'Las Vegas hotels' and 25 times more popular than the phrase 'travel agent' (source: Overture USA, February 2004).

Consumers search on the Internet by destination or niche. For example, they search for terms like: 'Europe holiday', 'travel to London', 'Sydney hotels', 'Amsterdam accommodation', etc. They don't generally search for a service such as 'travel agent' or 'flight booking agent'. Searching for a travel agent is the realm of the Yellow Pages®.

Data from travel agents reflects this. The Travel Industry Association of America reports that some 67% of online traveling consumers used the Internet during 2003 to get information on destinations (niches), to get (discount) prices or to confirm schedules.

So where is the traditional travel agent? Not online, that's for sure. When Hitwise measures the list of traffic to major travel sites it sees, Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Yahoo Travel and Cheaptickets as the top US sites and Zuji, Travel.com.au, Webjet and Flight Centre amongst the top Australian sites.

The reason travel agents aren't online or aren't getting sizeable chunks of online traffic is simply because they do not have the content that attracts the searching public. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN provide answers to consumer searches. They do this primarily by analysing the content that exists on a website. As consumers search for destination content, which travel agent websites generally do not have, they are not going to end up on an agent's site.

Travel agents are the product of high street ticketing instigated by the airlines some 30 years ago. They book, they ticket and they sell 'brochured destinations'. They provide a service, but that service is rapidly breaking down. Booking is moving online, led by the low-cost carriers. Whilst it is still point-to-point and largely confined to domestic travel, it is apparent that consumers have now learned how to book online.

As technology improves, booking internationally will become easier and consumers will use it. E-ticketing removes the need to produce a ticket. Flight Centre reports that almost one third of all air tickets it issues are e-tickets, a phenomenon that has grown from 9% in June 2002 to almost 30% in June 2003. The Internet has become the greatest source of travel knowledge and people are turning to it en masse. Tourism Queensland reports that 63% of people use the Internet to source information about their trip, compared with 19% of travellers who use a travel agent and 13% who use a tourist office.

Some would say we have heard all this before. 'The majority of international airline business is still sourced from travel agents and most agency turnover today is well above last year.' This may still be the case, but consider the following: travel knowledge and the consumer's search for that knowledge has moved online. Consumers have been taught to book online and the need for in-suburb ticket collection points is gradually being replaced by e-ticketing.

It is difficult to market travel agency services online. For example, online players like Zuji have 'online bookability' and e-ticketing, but they do not have the necessary destination content depth, which causes them to spend significantly on advertising to entice Internet consumers.

Traditional travel agents have not succeeded online. Most will tell you that online is a complete waste of time as their websites do not have the visitors or the bookings. It is worth remembering that simply building a site does not guarantee traffic, especially if you get the keyword content wrong. Get the keywords wrong and virtually everything else you do online will fail.

Travel agents do not have what consumers are searching for online. Other than some boutique destination specialists, travel agent sites don't have the destination content necessary to attract consumers. It is akin to fishing, dropping a line where the fish are not biting and refusing to move on to another spot.

Should travel agents be worried? In a word, yes. The US population with access to the Internet has just crossed the 200 million user barrier and the reported growth rates for online travel across all categories are 41% for 2004 and 33% for 2005 (PhoCusWright). These numbers no longer represent a small consumer base. In the US, one in five airline tickets were sold online in 2002 and one in five hotel bookings will be made online in 2005. The same trend exists in Australia.

What should travel agents do? For one thing, they should quickly become online destination specialists by examining what they sell a lot of and/or have a deep knowledge of. They should also create content pages for destinations they know intimately. If they do not have destination content, they should consider partnering with someone who does. They might also create and focus agency websites on particular destinations. Franchise groups could assist in this by co-operating with the industry's destination specialists, the tour operators, and create online destination franchisees for their members. It is not beyond the imagination to see a Harvey World, for example, create a virtual franchise for HWT Fiji, HWT Britain and HWT Canada.

If travel agents do not follow these recommendations, they will go the way of petrol stations; we will still have them, but there will be a lot less of them around... all because travel agents and the Internet don't mix.

Contact Amplify today to help ensure your online project gets off to great start.