Some travel agencies emerged unscathed from last year’s recession, but the majority of agencies faced large drops in revenues and transactions, according to the just released ASTA Travel Agency Business Trends survey.
“The survey also shows that while most leisure agencies are expecting to recover in early 2010, corporate agencies are not expecting a recovery until the spring of 2010 or later,” ASTA said.
Among the survey’s findings were:
• When comparing the first half of 2009 to the same time period in 2008, 78.2 percent of agencies saw a decrease in revenue, while 75.2 percent saw a decrease in transactions.
• More than 63 percent of agencies saw a decrease in the number of clients when comparing the first half of 2009 to the first half of 2008. Not surprisingly, corporate agency respondents have seen greater decreases in revenue.
• Seventy-six percent of respondents cut “operating costs” and 54 percent “took less pay” in response to the economy.
• More than half of all responding agencies are planning no changes in regards to employees.
ASTA conducted the study to assist leisure and corporate agencies in planning for the future as well as benchmarking their first half 2009 sales performance.
The report looks at changes agencies made to weather the past year as well as changes planned for the future.
By David Wilkening
