The Holiday Business Has It Been Hit Hard?

Was the ash cloud responsible for damaging the income for travel industries? As bookings have declined, there will be some travel agents hurt quite severely. It was amazing the clear correlation between booking rates and the ash cloud news. Booklings went down quite dramatically around Europe and the general Tourist economy was slammed quite hard. There are the specific areas that did do quite well. Those that either ran local holidays or those that ran long haul holidays.

Local businesses obviously made something really good out of this, purely because where else can the business go, especially when it comes down to working and booking time off. 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. Local businesses benefitted greatly from this, and found that they all of a sudden had a huge influx of money into their economy. 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!

The reason that the long haul tour operators have done so well is because they can usually negotiate a longer holiday stay, and get something out of it. This means they get to keep their customers happy and get a little something out of it. Because there isn’t that much to deal with in reference to bookings each day, they can control numbers a lot more effectively. The understanding held between the tour operator and the hoteliers is much deeper than that of Travel agents, usually plans need to be drawn out and affiliate systems discovered. This relationship allows rebooking to be easier and more reliable.

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!