Fast emerging online travel portals are posing a threat to the travel agents

Traditional Tour operator is the dinosaur of the Travel Industry and the bigger he is sooner he will fall. Unless he has embraced the technology and has a presence on virtual world. On the same note online travel portals that don’t have High Street presence will find going very tough. We are living in the world of dynamic packaging & it remains to be seen how your friendly neighborhood Travel Agent can beat that. People are more and more using internet and portals like Orkut, MySpace & YouTube are drawing even the senior citizens people to spend time in front of a computer monitor. The fast emerging online travel portals are not just threat to the business, they are the like hurricane warning and if you don’t get out of the way you will drown. With people doing close to 60 hours week I just can’t imagine them going to high street to book travel when they can do it at work with Google search tool at your beck and call, helping you out in planning your itinerary, routing, giving weather information, where to eat, what to do and the list goes on. This online journey of searching for destination information, checking out hotel reviews, going thru the on line eBrochures of the tourist attractions, checking out the flight routes; is in itself a most satisfying and I would rate this the same as the actual journey. Now there are few people who take this virtual journey but still would book from a high street travel agent. But they are like Xanti African tribes who are destined to vanish.