What are the drawbacks for a travel industry without travel agents?
In the Internet age, travelers have become travel agents.
Although it would seem that since there is more information available, the effect of the Internet on the travel industry only emphasized the problem that travelers have when planning their trips.
This resulted in a travel industry that leaves it up to the masses to decide where to go for vacation. This situation is good for the democratization of the ability to book itineraries. If the itinerary was flawed, there was no one to blame but ourselves. But this situation also has a tradeoff, which is in context. If there was a situation in which we didn’t want to travel to the top ten destinations, what other destinations are there? For people that travel frequently for vacation, this is a real problem. The problem is information dissonance. If we look at it as a Pareto situation, 80% of the marketing for traveling attracts the top 20% of the available travel destinations. This results in a situation where a majority of the tourists are interested in just less than 10% of the total tourist destinations. Does this mean that the rest of the 20% of travel destinations are less inviting or even safe? Mainstream media might discourage western travelers from vacationing in non-western countries because of the safety issue. They certainly are notorious for selling fear, uncertainty, and doubt to many western people. But this does not mean that vacation travel is lessening. In fact, it is increasing at a very healthy pace.
So travel agents still exist, although their customers are not vacationers. They mostly cater to businesses and the occasional retirees. Although this might be good business, the more interesting part of the market, the Millenial generation and the global customer, are definitely being underserved by the current travel services.
About TasselVR
TasselVR is a decentralized travel marketplace that lets travelers book tourist experiences from locals, instead of full-service tourist companies. TasselVR aims to bring the promise of VR technology to travelers one route at a time.
Chat with us:
