Guest Comment: Domestic tourism - agents or internet for growth? - 29 Sep 2003

Is 16% of UK domestic breaks booked direct using the internet high?
Could be rephrased when selling to small businesses....
Guest Comment: Domestic tourism - agents or internet for growth? - 29 Sep 2003: "A recent industry paper stated that the internet is used primarily for planning a holiday but only 16% of people used it to book a domestic holiday - well how much product is available because this actually seems a relatively high proportion when 90% of domestic holidays are booked direct?
The figures clearly indicate that the domestic tourism provider should be encouraged to provide bookable product online rather than seeing the travel agent as the untapped potential. They are not, of course, mutually exclusive and the tour operators offer some great product through retail outlets.

In its advice to the industry VisitBritain should clearly be telling the small businesses to develop their online information to provide on-line bookings too. The trend is already clear from the action of many of the big operators -over reliance on the retail agent would be investing in yesterday's technology and for the small business it makes better financial sense. " (with our standalone website product coupled with the booking engine it's worth going to the UKTA saying we'll put every business online).