The battle for tourism’s stranglehold: Who’s got the biggest, the most powerful, the most trusted?

Before all this goes too far maybe travel agents and tour operators and the countless tourism providers in the over 100,000 destinations should consider this one word: ‘Disintermediation’

Once upon a time there were just beautiful untouched virginal destinations and brave tourists who wished to visit them and enjoy their charms. They returned fulfilled and raving about the things they’d done and seen.
 
Just fifty years ago there were still thousands of virgin destinations, secluded in their seaside or mountain homes. In the swinging sixties there was just a trickle of tourism – less than 100 million international travellers a year.
 
Gradually people around the world got hooked on their tourism ‘fix’ and regarded it as the ultimate yearly escape and a badge of being middle class. The trickle became a flood and within a few short years from now, that 100 million will become 2000 million.
 
And that’s great – tourism allows hundreds of millions of middle-class people to get out of their surroundings for a short period of time and spend their money somewhere else, transferring wealth, generating employment and the possibility of communication, plus a bit more understanding, maybe.
 
And as an industry was rising to generate and fulfil this demand it was natural that all these potential tourists would look to offers in their own markets to fulfil their own dreams in their own languages. So, big tour operators selected destinations and accommodation, packaged them with transportation and sold the packages in the markets where the potential tourists lived. Although this was quite profitable it required investment in marketing so naturally the tour operators regarded the tourists as ‘theirs’ – after all they had made the marketing investment to acquire them and competed with other organisations to keep them.
 
In the 1960’s American Airlines created SABRE (Semi-automatic Booking and Reservations Environment)   which was what it said – a way to book bits of holidays; air travel, accommodation, car hire etc online. They floated this off, collected the money and it spawned a bunch of global competitors. What were then known as Online Travel Agents.
 
And resulted in a globally-connected bunch of booking agencies low on staff but high on tech and finance which, in today’s age of technological barons, seek, like Google and Facebook, to buy market dominance through massive investment.
 
Once they own the market there will be infinite possibilities to make money and get power as we’ve already seen.
 
When any one of these financial behemoths like Tripadvisor, Booking Holdings (Booking.com, Hotels.com etc), or Airbnb achieve the ability to provide a ‘One Stop Holiday Shop’ combining all the tourists’ destination requirements in one hit they will win a massive prize – the opportunity to get a monopolistic stranglehold on the travel and tourism industry.
 
But there are about 100,000 elements that are not included in this equation – destination communities and their appointed representatives, politicians etc.
 
It may well be that the OTAs can pick off parts of destinations – like Booking.com has with accommodation – and it may well be that Booking.com will be happy with the fact that they own a massive market share and now contribute significantly to Booking Holdings’ $100+ billion market capitalisation. But even though it is now the world’s 7th biggest internet group by revenue, shareholders always demand more.
 
Before all this goes too far maybe travel agents and tour operators and the countless tourism providers in the over 100,000 destinations should consider this one word: ‘Disintermediation’
 
And a question: “Who really are global tourism’s most potent brands?”
 
Travel intermediaries have established algorithm-driven money oil wells in destinations spurting at least a trillion dollars a year direct to their investors and it doesn’t even touch the sides.
 
Maybe it’s time for a bit of disintermediation by the most powerful brands in tourism to gain a trillion dollar prize which they may think is rightfully theirs. Maybe this money and this expertise could then be used to assist destination development rather than buy super yachts!
 
This big subject and its opportunities for every hard working professional in the travel industry – travel agents and tour operators, hoteliers, transport operators – the lot will be discussed in SustainableTourism 0.2 – pre-publication offer with 60% discount is still available HERE
 
More information at http://www.SustainabelTourismReport.com

Valere Tjolle
 

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