Travel agents adapt, move upmarket in face of budget web sites

In wake of Thomas Cook bankruptcy, travel agents ponder their future

Today's expression: Come around
Explore more: Lesson #196
October 7, 2019:

Do travel agents have a future? It's tempting to say that they do not due to budget online booking tools and the wealth of information on the internet. However, a lot of travelers still book package vacations. Though the in-person agencies like Thomas Cook are less popular, new travel agencies focus on authenticity and more exotic destinations. Plus, learn the English phrasal verb "come around."

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What is the future, if any, for travel agencies?

Hey there, welcome back to Plain English, the best podcast for learning English. Your recipe for success! I’m Jeff; JR is the producer; and this is episode 196. That means you can find all the episode resources at PlainEnglish.com/196. Among those resources are a video lesson on how to use “even if” in a sentence, “even if,” and flash cards. What’s our theme today? They’re business words, but they’re also trust words. Five of those in the Quizlet flash card set this Monday morning at PlainEnglish.com/196.

Coming up today, a continuation of Thursday’s topic: Is there a future for traditional travel agencies? Thomas Cook went out of business, suddenly, but package vacations are not dead yet. I’ve got a great phrasal verb for you, too, “to come through,” and we have a quote about bankruptcy—possibly the most famous quote about bankruptcy in the whole English language. It’s a good one.

Real quick before we dive in: you know we do a phrasal verb or an expression in every episode. But I also pick out one more word or phrase from the episode text that is not the selected phrase for discussion. Call it the runner-up. I write up a little explanation of that word and I e-mail it out to listeners in our e-mail community. So that’s every Monday and Thursday, a new word or expression. And you know what? I never run out. I never look at an episode and think, there’s nothing to talk about here. There’s always a word I want to highlight for our listeners. If you want to get those, make sure to sign up for our email list by visiting PlainEnglish.com/mail.


What is the future for traditional travel agencies?

We’re all familiar with the online, discount travel agencies like Expedia, Orbitz, hotels.com, Travelocity. There’s even one called “CheapOAir” and it’s not a joke. These discount agencies have eclipsed more traditional travel agencies in the last ten or fifteen years. You’ll remember that on Thursday, we talked about the package tour operator Thomas Cook and its sudden demise. The question we’ll explore today is, Is there a future for traditional travel agencies, or are they a thing of the past now that we have these cheap online booking tools?

Let’s start with the value proposition of a travel agent. Here’s what they provide. You go into a shop, browse a few pre-planned vacations, choose one, and buy it. Thomas Cook handles the itinerary, travel, logistics. You might not know anything about the place you’re going, but you know you’ll have a quality vacation based on the reputation of the travel agent.

That value proposition was much greater in the days before the internet, when the world was a lot less globalized than it is today. To understand better, I want you to picture trying to book a vacation in the days before the Internet. And I don’t mean somewhere easy: picture a country where you don’t speak the language. I’m going to pick Japan; you pick somewhere else. What would you have to do? You’d have to buy a book or go to the library to research the city. You’d read in that book a few pages on hotels; the hotels are not global brands like Hilton or Marriott. They don’t have photos; they don’t have user reviews. You have a name, a blurb, and a phone number. That’s it. So you’ll call international, somehow try to communicate your name and dates with the other person, and hang up nervously, hoping it worked.

When you get there, there’s no Uber. You have to find a taxi or expensive shuttle to your hotel. When you pay for things, you can’t pay with a credit card: your credit cards don’t work internationally, even if the shops accept plastic. So you’re carrying travelers checks, which you have to change into cash. Good luck booking a day trip out of town. There’s no way to know—aside from the guidebook—what restaurants are good. Maybe you want to book a walking tour or a bike tour around the city—but they might not speak your language. It sounds exhausting; and now imagine you have two kids with you!

Thomas Cook made international travel possible for so many people who couldn’t or didn’t want to go to all that effort. It also offered a consistent level of quality throughout your vacation. You might not know anything about the local country hotels or tour operators, but you knew they’d be good because Thomas Cook arranged it all. You can imagine how an international vacation could turn into a fiasco without good organization or a lot of advance preparation. And so that’s what they offered. And they made money by booking hotel rooms, tours, airline seats, spots on cruise ships, whatever, in bulk. They knew they’d have a steady stream of travelers, so they got the best prices. Win-win, as we say.

It’s not like that any longer. It’s tempting to say that the Internet killed that business model. We now have global airline alliances that fly to every part of the world; your local airline can get you just about anywhere. We have global hotel companies, so you can pick a hotel in most major cities and know what you’re getting, in terms of quality. You can research things online; hotels post photos and travelers post reviews. Tourism is big around the world; people speak English, just like all of you, so life is easier once you arrive at your destination. Transportation in a country is safer with Uber. And so on. Who needs a travel agent anymore?

Not so fast. This boggles the mind, but in the United States, half of all travel is not booked online. In the United States! Who are these people, not booking their travel online?! They exist. But I’ll tell you what else. The value of a travel agent still exists, just not for a traditional vacation. In fact, in Britain, the number of people booking travel as a package, rather than separately, a la carte, actually rose between 2000 and 2018.

Let’s say you want to go on a safari in Africa. Or go camping in Costa Rica. Or do a bike tour in the countryside of Portugal. Or hike from Cuzco to Machu Picchu. These are not vacations you can arrange with a few clicks of the mouse. You don’t want to get on the back of your jeep in Botswana and start having doubts about your safety. A tour operator with a good reputation can still help you go places you couldn’t otherwise go, with peace of mind. Fifty years ago, that place might have been Paris; today, Paris is easy, so tour operators help you do other things.

The other trend in modern tour operators is smaller groups, more focused activities, and more authentic experiences. Instead of taking a few hundred people to the Eiffel Tower every week, these new companies serve up more specialized vacations to smaller groups. For example, they take you to Bangkok and smaller villages nearby. Or they take you on a camel trek in Egypt; or a wine tour in Chile and Argentina.

I’ve started to come around to the idea of potentially booking a tour with a travel agent, but it would be with one of these smaller, boutique agencies that plans something that, realistically, I otherwise would not be able to do.


Time to say hello to a few people. First, Juarez from Brazil is a physiotherapist and has discovered a love of learning languages. He’s been studying English for six months, and judging by his email, he’s already made a lot of progress. I’d also like to say hi to Liane from Brazil wrote to say she really liked the episode about movie theater subscriptions, number 192. Great to have you both with us Juarez and Liane.

Related: Episode 192: Moviepass is a bust, but the subscription model for theaters endures

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Expression: Come around