Who Needs a Travel Agent? –

5

is the title of this report in MediaPost which actually deals with the impact of social networks on travel planning.

It’s fast becoming main stream opinion that recommendations by friends are the most important influencing factor on product choice in travel even more than price. Now, that should be music to the ears of online travel intermediaries who need to get off the price treadmill.

Here’s the key comment by Rohit Bargava of Influential Marketing Blog:

Bhargava applauds the move, but he wants to see even more improvement in travel social networking sites. “A big thing that’s missing in the travel industry world online is the community sites that we’re talking about are very separate from the booking sites, and if someone was smart, they would try to put those closer together.”

I’ve made the same comment a number of times on this blog and agree that a tighter integration is necessary as the industry evolves. There’s hardly a week without some new Travel 2.0 site sending me a pitch about their new innovation and most of them are very useful tools but lack the integration with the booking process.

The model of “Dream – Learn – Plan – Go” still applies as it did eight years ago when we first coined it for the process travelers inevitably go through. The tighter this is all integrated on one site the easier it is for people to be satisfied.

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