Agents hold key to boom

THE lack of travel reviews for overseas destinations over the last two years places Australian travel agents in a unique position to nurture the recovery of outbound volumes, Intrepid Travel’s Managing Director ANZ, Sarah Clark believes.

The operator’s local chief told TD this week that the dearth of reviews posted on review sites such as Tripadvisor has restricted travellers who might previously have relied on these sources for their travel reconnaissance.

“Those don’t really exist anymore,” Clark explained.

“If you’re looking at how to get from Egypt to Jordan, and you’ve been looking at traveller reviews, that would have all changed, so it’s going to be completely different and travellers really need that expert advice.”

Clark added that Australia was also a unique market in terms of its geography, a factor which plays into the hands of advisors.

“I’ve worked in a number of different markets living overseas and Australia is a unique ecosystem when it comes to booking travel because of the complexity of airfares accessibility,” she said.

“The fact is we typically take longer trips and travellers often add a few different elements to it; someone may book an Intrepid trip for example, but they’ll have four or five different other things around it potentially.”

Clark also noted that while there has been a trend to online during COVID because travellers couldn’t go into a physical store, the key for travel agencies now is to combine their online and offline services into a completely omnichannel environment.