Can The Holiday Industry Cope With The Loss Of Retail?

Was the ash cloud responsible for damaging the income for travel industries? As bookings have declined, there will be some travel agents hurt quite severely. It was amazing the clear correlation between booking rates and the ash cloud news. There was a very steep decline in bookings around Europe that hit the economy very hard. There are the specific areas that did do quite well. It was for those that organised either the local holidays or the Longer haul holidays.

People almost feel as thought they need to substitute something with another thing, especially if they have booked time off work for it. When some people found out they wouldn’t be able to fly, they did their best to refund tickets. So for all those people that didnt get the chance to book a holiday or get one transferred, they just holidayed at home. This presented the local businesses with a lot of money and the ability to boost local holiday areas. Whether or not this is a bad thing is another matter but all in all it meant that the money that would have been spent abroad, gets recycled back into the national community!

Because of the unique situation that they are in, the Tour Operators are more likely to negotiate a longer holiday, and even get themselves a little profit a s well. This means they get to keep their customers happy and get a little something out of it. The other reason is that generally speaking, bookings don’t happen all that regularly, it’s just that when they do it is a massive sum. This means that negotiation with hoteliers and the airlines is much easier and a more personal relationship with the customer allows them easier routes to refund money. It also makes the rebooking process much easier and smoother.

Bali holidays have shown this works well, along with Maldives holidays and Barbados holidays. Because tour operators are doing so well, and offer such a range of holidays, travel agents are finding it more and more difficult to sell holidays. If travel agents did move towards to the Tour Operating business, could we see cheaper prices on offer!