Internet marketing strategies used by travel agencies in Australia

Abstract

Traditionally retail travel agenices have acted as intermediaries between airline companies and wholsale travel companies and the consumer. The Internet and the World wide Web provide a whole new set of challenges and opportunities for this business sector. The major threat stems from airlines and wholesale travel companies offering their products and services directly to the customer without the assistance of travel agencies. Large online agencies have gained significant attention in the travel industry and provide some evidence of a restructuring of the travel industry sector. Although there has been much speculation in terms of the impact of the Internet and the threat of sidintermediation, there has been little work carried out on the Internet marketing models and strategies that travel agencies have adopted. This paper reports the findings of a large survey of Australian travel agencies’ websites and the marketing methods used. The survey analysed the functionality of the travel agencies’ webites, the marketing models used, and the types of information provided in the websites. The results found that the majority of agencies had a Yellow Pages or cyber brochure model for their website. A small percentage of websites allowed transactions to e performed but a significant number provided information on a range of destination and service-related topics. Approximately half of the sites monitored captured information on the Internet surfer but interestingly fewer captured the surfer’s e-mail address. The paper offers suggestions for travel agencies in using the Internet as a marketing tool and proposes ways for them to re-engineer their businesses via the Internet.