Travel Agents

Another high-end, membership-based travel consultancy opens up shop. We wonder how these businesses will distinguish themselves as competition grows in the realm of "curating bespoke experiential localized" travel.

After years of talking up the importance of attracting millennials and families to cruising, it appears cruise lines are leaving them with a positive impression of their time onboard when they do choose a cruise vacation.

There are vastly fewer retail travel outlets now than two decades ago, but a few creative agents are rethinking how to buy and sell travel in the real world.

Silence is indeed golden and isolation comes at a premium as well for luxury travelers who really, really want to get away.

Can a legacy brand like Flight Centre really transform itself and get more digital and global? The company is making the investments and acquisitions in people and technology to do so. Will the strategy be successful? It will take a few years to find out.

Break through the travel recommendation bubble with a good old-fashioned human expert.

Travel agencies are using digital education tools to reach the new generation of agents. More valuable could be back-end innovations that make life for agents more fun than figuring out dated computer systems.

Venezuelan travel agencies have refocused their strategies to face the economic crisis. The shift has not been enough to boost the business, which shows no signs of recovery.

Skift recently released our Megtrends Defining Travel in 2017. One trend, Humanity Returns to Travel, notes that, “all of the data in the world is much more powerful when placed in the hands of a well-trained, empathic person who can anticipate, be flexible, and help steward a cohesive experience.” This observation is coming to life through 2016’s increase, and 2017’s predicted increase in travelers seeking the services of travel agents/consultants.

It's one thing for a private equity group to own many fragmented hotel and travel assets. It's another to own a distribution platform to sell those products. Apple Leisure Group's new owners have to feel good about leveraging the company's scale and using its resources to help increase the viability of its existing assets.