Travel Agents!!

A travel agency is a business that sells travel related products and services to end-user customers on behalf of third party travel suppliers, such as airlines, hotels and cruise lines.Travel agencies can be found all over the world. Many are located in Europe or the Middle East, for example. Some serve as general service agents for foreign travel companies in different countries.

The international body for registering travel agents is the International Air Transport Association (IATA), although most travel agents are registered through national bodies such as the Australian Federation of Travel Agents.

ASFA, The Association of Special Fares Agents, Airline Consolidators, Bucketshops and Discount Travel Agents is the mother source for finding cheap fares online. ASFA was founded in 1985 as a platform for discount travel specialists, consolidators and bucketshops from all over the world. ASFA agents are registered and bonded according to the laws of the countries and states that they are operating in. Association of Special Fares Agents web site.

 

Travel agencies have been organized mostly since the start of commercial aviation although Thomas Cook was an early, pre-flight pioneer. The Portuguese company Viagens Abreu is the oldest travel organization, founded in 1840. Some operate with a chain of stores and others are one store operations. A few of the larger travel agencies sell their own products. Agencies without their own product are arguably more impartial and more likely to offer something to suit the traveller; they are known as independent agencies. there are three different types of agencies: these are Multiples, Miniples and independent agencies.

Most travel agencies do not sell airline tickets only; their services vary, and many of them sell more cruise ship packages than airline tickets. Most travel agencies also arrange car rental deals for their customers, and many concentrate on arranging charter or group trips to different destinations. For this, they deal with regular airlines, but many times, they also hire charter airlines. Many travel agencies exclusively represent a small group of supplier airlines, cruise and car hire companies and, often, the logos of the supplier companies are displayed on the windows of the agency's office.

Travel agencies also market and sell train and hotel products. Generally, their goal is to try to fit an ideal schedule onto the requirements of each specific customer.

The phrase travel agency has changed meaning since the emergence of companies like Thomson or Thomas Cook, who are now considered to be tour operators rather than travel agents. The difference is that tour operators manufacture and sell their own holidays whereas independent travel agents sell holidays from all the tour operators without limiting the range they offer to just their own product. The best travel agents deal honestly with a wide range of customers.

In the UK a group of just such travel agents formed a consortium which became known as Worldchoice. Each agency was independently owned, bonded members of ABTA and Worldchoice was the vehicle for both commercial negotiations with the tour operators and also a forum for best practise. In 2006 there were 700 agents in the Worldchoice consortium of independent travel agents.