A good question with a clear answer!

Which way is the travel industry headed?.

Traditional travel agencies are struggling to stay relevant, online travel agencies are trying to instill loyalty among their customers, travel search engines are the new upstarts, travel suppliers are flexing their muscles and global distribution

The web has brought about a tremendous amount of reduction in market friction and the travel industry is the poster child of this development. The keys to survival are relevancy and added value.It doesn’t matter whether it’s a traditional offline travel agent or a large scale new online agency. Both are intermediaries and if they want to stay in business, they better offer relevancy and added value to customers.

It will be interesting to see how the market shares will play out over the next few years as the ability to book complex travel online with new technology tools will become a reality.