An opportunity for traditional agents

“All the people cannot be catered to by Online Travel Agents (OTAs). Hence, today, people are asking for the traditional travel agent because they are facing a lot of problems with OTAs, including that of refunds, responses and the human touch, which they can get from a traditional travel agent. We have a lot of scope in India with rural tourism, farm tourism, M!CE, weddings, beach tourism, film tourism, adventure tourism and eco-tourism. All these things can be explored in the right way through traditional travel agents and not OTAs. However, which state would start travelling first only depends on the kind of restrictions and measures they have taken to fight COVID-19.”

–

PP Khanna

“Travel consultants are experts, and personalisation is going to be critical now more than ever. A lot of people are going to have questions, and there will be a lot of information coming from hotels, tourist destinations, theme parks, etc. Hence, it’s important to talk to your consumers. This is probably one of the biggest opportunities because it will no longer be a fast-transactional purchase. People would want the human touch and the expertise.”

– Kerri Hannaford

“While direct financial assistance may not be possible, agents can give suggestions as to what is to be done and the state governments do that, since they also want to do promotions. It helps the agents also because then more people travel to the state and will come to the agent. It helps everyone and agents should look forward to such help from the state governments. It takes tourism forward.”

– Ashwani Lohani