O IMPACTO DO MARKETING RELACIONAL NA DECISÃO DE COMPRA DO CONSUMIDOR DAS AGÊNCIAS DE VIAGEM

The travel agency sector is going through one of the most challenging moments in its whole story. From the first trip through intermediation, in 1841 by Thomas Cook, the sector has been improving its strategies and policies, ensuring a proeminent place and an extreme importance in the tourism market. In its turn, tourism has achieved encouraging economic indicators worldwide which is due in part to the demographic and social changes. Despite these encouraging indicators in the sector, the evolution of the technology allows the quick and easy interaction between costumers and producers leading to a sensation of instability felt by the intermediaries never observed. The trend of disintermediation causes anxiety and uncertainty among travel agents, leading many to pursue strategies that enable them to maintain desirable levels of competitiveness by seeking new markets and different ways of approaching these markets. The intimate relationship with the customer is a strategy that many travel agents take as core in the creation and maintenance of customer's loyalty, being this a criterion defined as differentiator, that allows them to explore a human side that technology, by itself, does not fully cover, being the opportunity to demonstrate their experience and know how, generating a relational position with the client that allows them to provide a sense of security and reliability, making them a partner. Through the characterization of relational marketing, this study allows the understanding of its influence on the purchase decision of travel agencies customers, using a qualitative methodology, consisting in the review of literature, data collection through interviews with those responsible for companies in the sector and the gathering of a focus group with clients of travel agencies