If Travel Agencies Can Survive in Singapore, Why Not Elsewhere?
Photo Caption: Singapore riverside: The country's travel agencies fighting hard to stand tall. Raini Hamdi
Skift Take
Anyone who says Covid-19 will finally do what the internet hasn't quite done — that is, sunset the travel agency — is speaking too soon. Singapore, where logically agents are least needed, isn't seeing massive closures so far, thanks to a government that recognizes their expertise, rather than a bot's.
For more than two decades, traditional travel agencies have been able to defy widely-held expectations they wouldn't survive the disruption brought about by online travel agencies and peer-to-peer review platforms.
The pandemic, however, has the ingredients to potentially sunset the sector.
In Southeast Asia, Covid-19 has accelerated digitization by one or two years, with 40 million first-time internet users browsing and buying online recorded this year. This brings to 400 million people, or 70 percent of the population in the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, that are connected online.
Covid-19 has also put paid to an old argument that agents will always survive because there's a perpetual swell of first-time travelers who need them. Alas, international travelers visiting Asia who require the destination knowledge and services of inbound specialists aren't able to arrive. Asian tourists, even first-timers, do not need the services of outbound
