A travel agency is a company associated to tourism, whose office is brokering, organization and realization of projects, plans and itineraries, processing and sale of tourism products among its customers and providers of travel, e.g.: carriers (airlines, cruise ships), accommodations (hotels), with the aim of placing the goods and tourist services available to those who want to and can use them.
The British company, Cox & Kings, founded in 1858, is the oldest travel agency in the world and Thomas Cook one of their most notable pioneers, their planning from 1841 of religious group tours. In any case, travel agencies were mostly from the 1920s, with the development of commercial aviation.
The phrase travel agency has changed its meaning since the emergence of companies like the above, is today considered more like a tour operator. The difference is that the tour operators offer a very closed-form travel plans, while agencies try to rather fold as possible to customers, taking their services, among others, of the greatest possible number of tour operators.
Travel agencies are especially useful for the recruitment of several days on foreign travel, as they facilitate formalities with foreign companies and resolved problems of accommodation and tourist guide.
Features
The majority of the travel agencies not only sell tickets for plane or train; their services vary and many of them sell more cruise packages than airline tickets, as well as services related to hotels. The majority of travel agencies also carry out car rental to our customers and many of them focus on the Organization of trips for groups to different destinations. To do this, they work with regular airlines, although often they do with charter airlines. Many travel agencies exclusively represent a small group of suppliers: airlines, cruises and car rental companies, so often, these companies logos are displayed in the windows of the offices of the Agency. Some travel agencies offer a currency exchange service. In the majority of the agencies also can be offered tours desk, in most commercial destinations primarily, depending on the destination can provide with transportation included where the client comes from the comfort of your hotel, also you can include food and beverages, guides to give more information on the sites that they are learning, when travelling in family obtained preferential prices. Tourism is broad in all sense of the Word can be found for all tastes and budgets, holiday season and regular season, always people will find a good choice for your vacation and have a nice holiday.
Types
A travel agency can consolidate as a single operations centre or, on the contrary, as a string of locations throughout a given area.
At the time of the exclusivity of the offered travel agencies are divided into two groups: on the one hand are those big agencies that, acting almost as authentic suppliers, offer products and services that conditioned by themselves, are very general and little adapted to particular preferences; on the other hand, they are smaller, travel agents still having less control over the service, they are able to adapt more to the conditions of each customer.
There are two different types of travel agencies:
(a) according to their operational nature and point of view:
Commercial:
Tour operators: those that organize trips directly contracting with the service providers.
Distributors or Wholesaler: those that develop projects, offered and distributed products and tourist services through the agencies retailers. Normally is not engaged with the end customer. They tend to make reservations to meet the demands of the retailers, wholesalers earn a Commission on sales of retailers.
Retail, retailer or Retailler: those that sell directly to the consumer, services and products organized by other agencies or themselves.
Mixed or of organisation and provision of services: has the capacity to develop and organize travel and services for customers and agents.
Geographical:
International: has global coverage.
National: it has coverage within a country.
Local: It has coverage in a town or city and its surroundings.
Operating tourist:
Agency egresivo tourism or export: attends the supply and demand of tourism egresivo abroad.
Receptive Tourism Agency: serves within the country from tourist flows from abroad.
Domestic tourism agency: attends the internal movement of tourism in a country.
(b) according to the argentina legal regulation: on 6 November 1970 was issued the Argentina law n ° 18.829, which normalizes the activity of travel agencies. The law attempts that the activity of the agencies to develop within a framework of dignity, under fair control of quality and honesty of the services provided.
Article n ° 4 of the regulatory decree n ° 2182/72.1 travel agencies classified in three categories, namely:
1) travel and tourism companies: are those that perform the activities mentioned in article n ° 1 of the Act 18829, for own clients, other agencies of the country or from abroad or third parties.
2) tourism agencies: are those that perform all activities mentioned in article n ° 1 of the Act 18829, for its clients, including inbound tourism on their own.
3) passages agencies: are those who can act on the reservation and sale of tickets in all authorized means of transport or sale of scheduled services by travel and tourism companies and air, water and land transporters.
Organizations [edit]
On April 20, 1931, the American Society of agencies of trip (ASTA) in the city of New York was formed to defend the rights of U.S. travel agents about the power of growing systems of the day of the airlines. Now headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, the ASTA still representing agencies and travel agents.
The International Agency for registered travel agents is the International Association of air transport (IATA), although the majority of travel agents are registered through national organizations such as the Australian Federation of travel agents.
Interne
With the arrival of general access to the Internet, many airlines and other travel companies began to sell tickets directly to passengers. As a result, airlines stopped having pay commissions to travel per sold ticket agents. Since 1997, travel agencies are gradually had to adapt to disintermediation, the reduction in costs caused by removing layers from the package holiday distribution network.2 3
Many travel agencies have developed a presence on the Internet by publishing a web site, with detailed travel information. Full travel reservation sites are often complex, and require the assistance of suppliers of technology solutions travel as Travelocity, Pas, hotels and car rental.
Some of the travel web sites allow visitors to compare multiple hotel companies and flight fees for free. They often allow visitors to sort the packages by services, price, and proximity to a city or signal.
Travel agents have developed dynamic packaging tools to provide fully consolidated trip (full financial protection) at prices equivalent to or less than what a member of the public can book online. Thus, the advantages of financial agencies are additionally protected for the professional advice of the travel agencies.
All online travel sites that sell online hotel rooms work together with many foreign travel agencies. Once the site sells a reservation, one of the additional travel agents is contacted and will seek a confirmation for this hotel. When this is confirmed or not, the customer is contacted with the result. This means that reservations at a hotel on a travel website will not give you an instant response. Just some of the hotels on a travel website
