ISSN : 2663-2187

Study on the Customer preference between Travel agencies and Airline Websites and Marketing Strategies to improve Travel agencies customer base.

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Raghava Ramanujan R.D, Arun Kumar K
» doi: 10.48047/AFJBS.6.12.2024.1132-1139

Abstract

Aviation is a fast growing sector in which there are several players involved in facilitating the smooth movement of passengers between destinations. One such important relation is that of the Airlines and the Travel Agencies. Travel agencies serve as a go-between for customers and Airlines. They guarantee that airline tickets are sold out in addition to assisting passengers with the booking of their tickets. But as the world is fast changing and technology is taking over in almost all the industries, Aviation is no exception. Unlike before, nowadays passengers prefer to book their flight tickets on their own over the internet rather than depending on Travel agencies. As of 2023, 72% prefer internet bookings as against just 12% in favor of travel agencies, which was not the case earlier, (Armstrong, Martin. 2023). 70% of the flight bookings used to go from Travel Agencies. As the Aviation sector has largely evolved over the years, passengers have also started to book tickets directly from the Airlines instead of going via Travel agencies. Talking about the Indian market, 68% of the passengers prefer airlines websites to directly book tickets instead of Travel Agencies (The Economic Times, 2015). This being said, Travel Agencies still have connections with Airlines and they market flights tickets on behalf of the Airlines. Popular Travel Agencies like Makemytrip, Goibibo, Skyscanner India, Cleartrip and many more have their own flight bookings page for passengers to book their flight tickets. They even provide an end to end service inclusive of flights, accommodations, transfers and so on. There are travelers who still book tickets using these platforms even today. But will this be enough for the travel agencies to generate more revenue? Or should they improve their marketing strategies to up their sales? Travel agencies do get commission from Airlines for the ticket bookings. The commission percentage for domestic flight bookings is 0 to 5 percent whereas for international flight bookings it is 10 to 20 percent (Lee, steph. 2023). But that’s not all, Travel agencies also charge the customers a service fee for the booking of flight tickets. All this being said, there are two aspects, one, the passengers moving towards direct flight bookings and two, travel agencies marketing flight tickets using their online booking pages. So, the main objective of this research paper is to find out whether Travel agencies are preferred by the majority of customers for flight bookings over Airline websites and what customers' opinion on pricing and marketing efforts taken by travel agencies.

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