Zagat Survey Says More People Booking Flights Directly

A new survey indicates that travel agents are slowly losing their market foot-hold for airline bookings due to the massive influx of travellers self-booking online. The data was released y Zagat, a travel and food surveyor.

According to the research, 8 percent of current airline reservations were made through a travel agent. These numbers fell from 17 percent four years ago in 2007. Comparatively, 64 percent of today’s bookings are made online which is rapidly growing from 55 percent in 2005, and 60 percent in 2008.

According to the numbers, air travellers are continually looking more and more to online booking to make flight reservations cutting out travel agents in the process. With the advent of such sites as Travelocity and Expedia, many travellers are cutting out the middle man and booking themselves.
However, the numbers also indicate that specialty websites such as Expedia and Travelocity have also fallen by 15 percent over three years, as a growing trend to make a reservation directly on the airline’s website begins to emerge.

The smallest numbers by far, however, are over-the-phone bookings with only 4 percent of reservations being made via the telephone. This study is part of an annual study in its fourth year released by Zagat. The study polls over 5,800 international travellers. Not surprisingly the study revealed that airline travel on the whole had declined this year. 33 percent of those polled had opted to fly less or not at all during 2009.