The travel business is changing31 Aug 2019 08:57
Look on the ABTA website at the number of travel agents who have given up their ABTA license.
Particularly June/July when their accounts where due.
The focus is now homeworkers, more and more are joining, no rents, etc but no high street presence.
They have a big presence and, with the right marketing, could become number 1 . But the risk is people taking information away and playing off against other agents online.
The very agents who have none of the overheads I mentioned above. These who are happy to make £100 on a £3000 booking that normally have a 10% commission.
High street agents cannot work on such margins and that is where they could have BIG problems.
Their on-line presence is not the best, a pretty poor booking system and a move towards “on-line” chat when you need to speak to someone, all well and good but when you are 17 in the queue then people will be irritated. Leaving without answers and going somewhere else and if they have booked and need an answer they will remember the wait when they are looking to book next time.
They have been too slow to react to changes.
I think there is a future for them if Fosun do win and the deal goes through I think there will be some BIG cuts, especially on the high street, but I hope they invest in the online systems and the high street staff can get the chat queues down
IMO