Travel Agents Insist: “We’re Still Here!”

Travel seminars were popular at the New York Times Travel Show held Feb. 28-March 2, 2014, at the Javits Center.

The keynote panel on travel industry trade day at the New York Times Travel Show in Manhattan this past weekend was made up of travel agents and their representatives, and they had one plea to the public: We haven’t gone away!

Apparently a good percentage of the public thinks travel agents have gone the way of the dinosaurs or at least print newsweeklies, on the seriously endangered list.

Stark statistics were presented: while use of traditional travel agents for booking trips is up 18 percent over the past three years, only 13 percent of the public uses them to book leisure trips, and only 16 percent use them on the business side.

The Internet, of course, is the culprit, encroaching more and more on travel agent territory since the late… Continue reading →