UK Ferry Tickets

Nearly half of all holidays will be booked online within four years.

Says who? Some Internet geek? No, in fact, the predictions have come from one of the traditional giant tour operators who many expected would be put out of business by the online revolution.

Thomson, like most of the major tour operators, has had a tough time in recent years and is shutting many of its traditional travel agencies.

But if you can’t beat them, you have to join them and Thomson is now so convinced that people will continue booking holidays on line that it is busy restructuring its businesses to survive.

But what will happen to the high street agent? Many are shutting down and those that survive will have to adapt. Thomson believes they will sell products such as pre-holiday gym packages and foreign language courses to make up for the loss of holiday sales.

Frankly, I’m not convinced. If you’re prepared to pay for a holiday over the Internet, then surely you’ll be happy booking a language course via a website.

But there’s no doubt the traditional agencies will have to think of something new to survive the change in booking patterns.

Bizarrely, they could end up looking a lot like the first travel agencies of the 19th Century.

Thomas Cook opened the first store in Fleet Street, London. There weren’t many packages around in those days, so it could hardly make a living encouraging people to go away for their holidays.

It didn’t sell airline tickets because the aeroplane hadn’t even been invented. The historic achievements of the Wright Brothers, who are credited with launching the first flights, were still 38 years away.

Instead, the shop had to offer other travel-related products, such as telescopes and field glasses, luggage and passports to make ends meet. It even sold accommodation upstairs in a boarding house.

Perhaps the retailers of the future can take a leaf out of its book and sell luggage or rent out nearby rooms.

On the subject of Internet bookings, you might think most are done by trendy young people living in the sophisticated south of the country.

If so, you’d be wrong. Broadband provider Pipex interviewed 500 Britons with Internet access and found one in ten had bought a flight or holiday online during the past month.

Interestingly, nearly one in five fifty-year-olds bought travel online against one-in-ten thirty-year-olds. People from the North are spending on average £120 a month on holidays and flights, compared with those in the Midlands who spend £66 and southerners who shell out just £35.

Guest Article by Jeremy Skidmore

Friday, May 18th, 2012