How Much Damage Was Done To The Travel Industry?
Did the ash cloud really hit these travel agents and tour operators all that hard? Because of the steep decline in bookings there will be some heavy casualties. It was amazing the clear correlation between booking rates and the ash cloud news. There was a very steep decline in bookings around Europe that hit the economy very hard. There are the specific areas that did do quite well. It was for those that organised either the local holidays or the Longer haul holidays.
It is pretty self explanatory why the local businesses made something out of this, but it might help to look at some reasons. When some people found out they wouldn’t be able to fly, they did their best to refund tickets. So for all those people that didnt get the chance to book a holiday or get one transferred, they just holidayed at home. This presented the local businesses with a lot of money and the ability to boost local holiday areas. Whether or not this is a bad thing is another matter but all in all it meant that the money that would have been spent abroad, gets recycled back into the national community!
Tour Operators manage to skew a deal out of this though, they can generally arrange for a longer holiday, and even manage to get a little profit as well. Buy doing this everyone is happy, including the customer and the tour operator. Bookings are not a regular occurrence in this business, at least not as much as breaks and trips. This means that negotiation with hoteliers and the airlines is much easier and a more personal relationship with the customer allows them easier routes to refund money. It also makes the rebooking process much easier and smoother.
Bali holidays have shown this works well, along with Maldives holidays and Barbados holidays. Some Travel Agents are now even contemplating moving toward a tour operator angle to try and save some money, which is a massive move. If travel agents did move towards to the Tour Operating business, could we see cheaper prices on offer!
