Agents fight off online rivals

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Despite fast growth for online travel retailers, traditional ‘high street’ travel agents remain by far the most important sales channel for tour operators in Germany, the dossier showed. In 2011, growth was shared broadly equally between ‘offline’ and online bookings channels, meaning there was little change in the overall market shares of the two channels. Online sales are estimated to have grown about 10% last year, driven by the largest portals, while agencies increased revenues by 9.5% (and by 7% excluding business travel sales).

The largest German tour operators, for example, sell about 80-90% of their holidays through travel agencies and about 10-20% through the internet. Thomas Cook has a relatively high 20% of sales through own and third-party portals and other non-agency outlets. Alltours sell about 15% of its holidays via such channels and Rewe about 9%, the dossier showed. TUI did not disclose its figures but has said in the past that non-agency sales represent about 19%, including airline TUIfly, but only about 6% for its core package business.

The leading tour operators have marketed their holidays through some 10,000 travel agents for many years, while smaller rivals are adding more agents as sales partners.

The travel agency share is even higher for some tour operators. Specialists such as study tour operator Studiosus and cruise firms Phoenix Reisen and TUI Cruises all sell well over 90% of their holidays through agencies. In contrast, holiday homes operators InterChalet and Interhome sell more than 60% of their deals via the internet.