How Travel Agency Survive in e-Business World?

Ronnie Cheung and Pamela Lam

Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

University of South Australia, Australia

Abstract

This paper provides certain degree of analysis on the benefits that leverage from the use of new technologies in the Travel Industry. Besides the concerns about what technology can do for travelers, we also address the  pressures for changes, the potential impacts on different category of travel agencies and also the implications on leisure and corporate market segments. The paper also explains the three phases— intermediation, disintermediation and reintermediation that travel agencies may be facing when serving as the middleman between the product providers and the customers. In response to the electronic business impulse, travel agencies may react differently; the paper also elaborates on how the industry players reengineer their business in order to maintain the competitive position or at least to survive

Keywords: Intermediation, Disintermediation, Reintermediation, Electronic Commerce, Travel Industry
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