But six years ago he drastically refocused the business. With Internet travel-planning cutting into industry profits, Stewart needed a new strategy to stay afloat. “I could see the big boys were going to be having a bloodbath in the mass-package market,” he says. He noticed a large number of cruise ships being built and decided to step up his advertising of cruise packages. By 1999, Stewart had launched Scotland’s Cruise Centre, which is now the largest of its kind in the country. Today, nearly half of his 5,000 annual customers book cruises.
For a while it seemed as if the Internet might kill off travel agents like a meteor squashing dinosaurs. But if anything, it has forced them to become savvier. Many, like Stewart, are adapting and moving into profitable niches like cruises, gay and senior-citizen travel, adventure vacations–even pet travel–to ensure their survival. “We are not about the air ticket anymore,” says Kathy Sudeikis, vice president of the American Society of Travel Agents and an intergenerational travel specialist. “We are about the total trip.”
The modern travel agent has to compete on expertise. More and more are taking destination- and market-specialist courses through the Wellesley, Massachusetts-based Travel Institute or online through the Travel Agent University. They’re spending more time on the road, building up the sort of intimate, local knowledge that’s tough to beat. Agents have also learned to embrace the Internet. “We work in tandem to help consumers sort through the information overload,” says Sudeikis, whose niche–planning vacations for two or three generations of a family–accounts for almost 60 percent of her million-dollar business. Some go head-to-head with online travel sites; the Flight Centre, an Australian chain of 1,000 outlets, “guarantees to beat” any price on the Web–largely by buying in bulk.
And while the Internet might be cheaper and easier for simple trips, it often fails on things like connecting flights–let alone complex, long-haul travel involving a welter of rules and competing deals. “The Internet is great on travel from A to B, or on simple city breaks,” says Nick Wallace, owner of Abacus Travel Ltd. in Letchworth, England. “But on any reasonably difficult itinerary, you’ll need an agent to do it.”
Wallace specializes in business travel, which has been hard hit since 9/11, though it is beginning to rebound. He says a big part of his business has become “golden oldies”–older clients who like to spend a lot of time talking over their travel plans in person. “We keep hearing that we’re a dying breed, that we’re all doomed,” says Wallace. “It hasn’t happened yet.”
