The travel industry as a whole has undergone an incredible amount of change in the last twenty years, caused by World disasters and changing economic times. It has been hit hard and often and, therefore had to re-design itself many times. Those companies that failed to make the adjustments required are no longer with us, for example Canada 3000 in Canada, People's Express in the USA, and several tour operators, the most recent of which was Conquest Vacations in Canada.
Travel companies are subject to every disaster in a foreign land because it affects people's ability and willingness to travel there. Again, without reciting every disaster in the modern world, the most recent was the H1N1 flu virus that started in Mexico. This outbreak prompted the World Health Organization to ban travel to Mexico. The impact on travel companies was big because Mexico is a very popular getaway, especially in the early Spring.
All of these events in recent times have created a survival need within the travel business to innovate and to be creative about reducing expenses while trying to attract enough customers to break-even or make a little profit.
One of the recent innovations has been to encourage you and I, the consumer, to search for and book our own travel. We have become our own travel agent. The Internet has opened up a much wider market to the airlines, hotels, cruise lines, car rental companies, tour operators and travel companies in general. It has enabled direct contact with the consumer as opposed to being reliant on travel agents.
Booking travel online is BIG business. No more than 7 years ago the total revenue booked through online travel web sites was approximately $10million, last year that number grew to over $12billion.
But the world of booking on line travel can be complicated and does cause frustration. Hence the reason I created this web site. My mission is to help you, my reader, to understand how the world of online booking works and what goes on behind the scenes. By doing this I hope to be able to cure some of the frustration.
Therefore, here are some questions for you.
- Have you successfully booked your first travel experience online?
- How was the experience?
- Did you get some unexpected results when you were trying to search for that flight or hotel?
- Did you shop around?
- Did you find the same flight advertised for different prices on different web sites?
- Did you go to book a flight, only to find out it was no longer available?
- Did you go to book a flight only to find out the price had changed from when you searched for it?
Do you want to know why this happens?
Follow me to the next page and I will tell you why.
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