An exploratory study on consumers' selection of Australian regional travel agencies

The research reported in this paper explores why regional consumers choose to book their travel arrangements with travel agencies. Consumers can now access on-line bookings for airlines, accommodation, transportation, sightseeings tours and other related products so why do they still go to travel agencies for reservations? This paper identifies the attributes which consumers seek in a travel agent or consultant and determines the relative importance of these in their selection process. The research will be conducted in two stages. The first stage has been completed and was a series of in-depth interviews with 10 users of regional travel agencies and three travel agency consultants. The second stage will be a mail-out survey of travel agencies in the Darling Downs area of Queensland, Australia. Despite its locality, the region is a significant consumer of travel with approximately eight retail travel agencies in the city of Toowoomba alone. The in-depth interviews highlighted the need to de-emphasize two particular agency attributes considered for inclusion in the survey for stage two. They were, agency promotion and adequate brochure provision which were deleted from the intended survey and replaced with parking and travel reward programs as factors worthy of investigation