The Value of Travel Agents - Unique Products & Value Add Services

An interesting article was posted by Travelmole.com today that strongly support my view that travel agents need to differentiate themselves by focusing on a niche and providing value added services. The article titled “Travel agents seek supplier support” states that:

“A staggering 94% of agents who were concerned with supplier relationships and 79% of travel agents concerned with profit margins said they already had or were planning to expand their product offerings in order to mitigate those concerns.

Many were including medical, green, cultural and events tourism packages as well as honing their services to the corporate travel segment. “

This is particularly good news for tour operators who are offer unique and interesting destination products and are looking for retail relationships. In addition, the article goes on to quote Don Birch, CEO and President of Abacus International, who said…

“…it is not enough to be just selling a consolidated package of accommodation, air and entertainment tickets.

“Anybody can do that, but to be a travel agent of the future, the key is to differentiate and to grow their businesses these agents must have unique products and a strong brand with multi-channel competency…”

This definitely reinforces my recommendation to agents that they need to focus their attention on their selling unique products with equally unique suppliers and to provide a full service approach to the travel purchasing process by adding value at every step of the cycle.

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