Rob Torres, Google’s travel industry director, is not surprised that many travelers are returning to travel agents.
“It doesn’t surprise me because I think what is happening is more people are looking for service again, especially for complicated purchases. It’s very tough to actually transact complicated travel purchases online,” Mr Torres told Travel Trade.
His background includes a stint as vice president of strategic hotel partnerships at Expedia.
In an exclusive interview with Travel Trade, Torres pointed out that all travel agents, whether originally offline or online, need to combine the best of both worlds.
“It’s not one or the other anymore. Five, six years ago everyone thought it’s the death of the brick-and-mortar agent, but I think we’ve found that’s not the case,” he said. He added:
“There’s a certain group of shoppers that want to transact online and then there’s still a certain group that doesn’t.”
The travel agencies that survived the lean years are here to stay, he added. But many of those agencies “have also now built an online presence because they know that people go back and forth” from online to offline and back. Travel agents need to take advantage of both.
Those that haven’t yet built an online presence need to add it, he said.
“If they can somehow build some sort of online presence, even if it doesn’t have booking capability, but is driving customers to their storefronts or their call centers, they’re going to have a better advantage and better chance at acquiring customers than they may have had,” said Mr Torres.
Report by David Wilkening
