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Report: fast-changing packaged travel offers promises and problems
The packaged-travel business continues to change dramatically as distribution migrates to the internet, according to a new report from Cornell’s Center for Hospitality Research.
The report outlines both the difficulties and the opportunities of internet packaged-travel sales.
The authors point out that tour packages are still assembled and sold in the traditional fashion.
“That said, the big growth potential lies in sales to individual customers and small groups, particularly those who use the web to assemble their own custom tour packages,“ said the report.
”We see both promise and problems for packaged-travel vendors,” said William Carroll, one of the authors. He added:
“The great promise of the internet is in evolving web 2.0 applications, where vendors can offer travel elements based on customers’ wishes, as expressed online in social networking activities. The problem is connectivity, because true dynamic packaging requires information systems that permit real-time inventory exchange between travel suppliers and packagers.”
Another of the authors, Robert Kwortnik added that vendors should seek to enhance customers’ value perceptions by offering integrated, high value packages.
“While integrated packages should help offset price transparency, we also note that any of the participants in this process can become competitors, by offering their own packages, even as they work together to create consumer value.,” he said.
To assist practitioners in assessing the value of travel packages, the authors offer a detailed framework and checklist that examines the value drivers in the processes of search and shopping, consumption, and evaluation of travel packages.
The report, “Travel Packaging: An Internet Frontier,” by William Carroll, Robert Kwortnik, and Norman Rose, is available at no charge from the center at http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/2007.html.
Report by David Wilkening
David
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