Strong growth in demand to fuel for local Travel Agents: TravClan Survey
TravClan, a B2B travel platform recently conducted a survey on close to 250 small to midrange travel agents and consumers across India to identify post-pandemic changes in the travel business ecosystem and the behavior of the Indian traveller. Survey predicts a positive market sentiment with close to 80 per cent of travel agencies catering to first time customers.
After a difficult 2020 and second wave, now vaccination drive has gathered momentum, and travel business is showing signs of a sustained resumption this time. In such a scenario, the survey throws up certain interesting insights on the future of travel industry.
About 83 per cent of the agents surveyed have catered to first-time customers (those who never used travel agents’ services before). This is a key indicator of how an increasing number of travellers are now turning towards travel agents and trip planners. Compared to large OTAs and marketplaces, travel agencies are being preferred as the need for personalisation, and real-time connectivity has increased significantly in the post-pandemic times.
The survey also revealed the fact that, unlike the perception that the younger people travel more, the travel agents are anticipating over 75 per cent of the holidaymakers in the near future to be in the 30 to 50 years of age group. This indicates more likelihood of couple and family travels’ share increasing in the market. There is also a greater rise in the segment of people willing to spend more to get better services and experiences compared to budgetconscious travellers.
Speaking about this, Arun Bagaria, Co-founder, TravClan said, “The global tourism industry has endured a major existential challenge and is now confidently overcoming this based on knowledge gained during the last one year. The streamlining of processes and progress of vaccination program is likely to result in strong recovery in the market within the next six months or so. We have been able to generate a number of highly impactful insights into the travel industry’s operations.”
The buoyancy about post-pandemic travel demand is making even those agents re-enter the world of tourism who had earlier shut shop fearing the collapse of global travel business. The survey reveals that most of the travel agents believe that travel operations will resume faster than expected earlier and the international travel is also expected to resume in several major markets by October 2021 with several countries like Maldives, Thailand already announcing phased re-opening.
The survey also brings out the change in the approach towards travel and the reasons behind traveling. Leisure travel and shorter weekend trips have become more popular. Travel agents have also been servicing demand for workcations and staycations that emerged during the pandemic.
Adding further, Arun Bagaria, said, “Travel agents are evolving to service the needs of the future travellers by building trust and high-quality service at a time when travel regulations are changing frequently. The travel agents who traditionally functioned offline are also now rapidly adopting the new technologies and becoming travel planners and actively carrying out marketing activities on social media. At TravClan, we have consistently worked towards making the digital transition smooth, affordable and easy for millions of travel companies in India and across the world.”
A lot of uncertainty has gripped the travel sector during the pandemic due to the constantly changing operational scenario, restrictions on certain services, destinations and customer concerns. However, travel agents are now evolving into new agent travel entrepreneurs and rediscovering themselves to meet the demands of the traveller!