Travel agencies show increased interest in the Internet

According to Sabre, European travel agencies are showing increased levels of interest in tools that will help them exploit the market for online travel.

Sabre says that in the past three months alone it has sold online booking engines to five ‘conventional’ travel agencies and a tour operator: Champion Travel in the UK, German package deal specialist Skytours, Italian agencies Diners Club Travel and Di Lauro Viaggi, The Caribbean Travel Centre, and French tour operator Boomerang.

Sabre’s vice president for online travel solutions, Alicia Gardner, points to the six recent signings as proof that the concept of a “bricks and clicks” travel agency is catching on. She said Sabre was getting enquiries from travel agencies as far afield as Latvia and Bosnia although, perhaps unsurprisingly, most interest was coming from Western Europe. Sabre gets “several dozen” enquiries each month from agencies in this region.

Ms Gardner acknowledged that not all of these are firm sales leads, and said many agencies simply wanted to know more about what tools were available, how they work and what the costs are of establishing an online presence.

“It’s noticeable, though, that the number of enquiries has rocketed over the past 12 to 18 months”, she said.

“I believe the rapidly changing business environment has woken agencies up to the fact that they need to diversify their revenue streams, and offer customers the ability to buy travel in whichever channel they feel most comfortable.”

Internet analyst Jupiter estimates that the European market for online travel will be worth over €20 billion by 2006, and that online traffic to travel sites grew by 75 percent in some European countries last year. The UK is the biggest online travel market in Europe, with almost six million people visiting travel sites in January 2002. Germany is next with 5.1 million, followed by France with 2.6 million.