When a traveler comes to your agency, they are often looking for you to book an all-inclusive experience. From the hotels and airlines, to the excursions and ground transportation, travel has a lot of moving parts. They hire you when they want things to come together effortlessly, and that means booking airline tickets. Despite the old myth that travel agents don't book airline tickets, an increasing number of agents booked flights in 2017 than in 2016.
"Next time someone tells you they don't think travel agents sell airline tickets anymore, just tell them about this report for 2017," says James Shillinglaw from Insider Travel Report (you can read the full article here).
To go along with the great news, The Insider Travel Report goes on to further quote statistics from Airlines Reporting Corp (ARC) from 2017's findings. It looks like travel agencies based in the U.S. are up 3.4% for their consolidated dollar value of airline tickets sold from the previous year, and 3.4% more passenger trips were settled by ARC for U.S. travel agencies.
While the rise in sales can be partly accredited to lower ticket prices, increasing passenger trips, and the economic conditions, these numbers are a positive depiction of the travel agent community and their willingness to supply inclusive services to clients.
There may be a trend of agents booking air-only travel as well. In a recent case study with Carta Travel Connection, travel agent Joy Carta told us she frequently books flights and nothing else for her clients.
"I book a lot of air-only travel. Believe me, I don't do it for the money, it's because I believe in providing top-level services to my clients, " Joy told us.
Carta goes on to explain how booking flights for clients increases the rapport she has with clients. Her agency operates mainly off of referrals, which makes gestures like these important to her agency's well being. You can go on to read more about how Joy Carta increases revenue while working with TravelSafe when booking air only travel by reading the full case study here.
