Travel is the transport of people on a trip/journey or the process or time involved in a person or object moving from one location to another. Reasons for travel include:
- Tourism—travel for recreation. This may apply to the travel itself, or the travel may just be the necessary investment to arrive at a desired location.
- Visiting friends and family
- Trade
- Commuting–going to various routine activities, such as work or meetings.
- Migration—travel to begin life somewhere else; nomadic people do this
- Pilgrimages—travel for religious reasons
The word originates from the
Middle English word
travailen ("to toil"), which comes from the
French word
travailler ("travail").
As the name implies, their main function is to act as an
agent, that is to say selling travel products and services on behalf of a supplier. Consequently, unlike other retail businesses, they do not keep a stock in hand. A package holiday or a ticket is not purchased from a supplier unless a customer requests that purchase. The holiday or ticket is supplied to them at a
discount. Thus, the agent's
profit is the difference between the supplier's price and the price at which the product is advertised or sold to the customer. This profit is called the agency
commission, and varies a great deal. In Britain, 12% would be considered a good commission.
Other commercial operations are undertaken, especially by the larger chains. These can include the sale of in-house
insurance,
travel guides and
timetables,
car rental, and the services of an on-site
bureau de change dealing in the most popular holiday currencies.
The majority of travel agents have felt the need to protect themselves and their clients against the possibilities of commercial failure, either their own or a supplier. They will advertise the fact that they are
bonded (posting a financial bond with an organisation). In the case of a failure, the customers are guaranteed either an equivalent holiday to that which they have lost, or (if they prefer) a refund. Many British agencies (and tour companies too) are bonded with
IATA for those who issue their own tickets,
ATOL for those who order tickets in, or
ABTA for those who sell package holidays on behalf of a tour company.
Of course, a travel agent is supposed to offer impartial travel advice to the customer. This function almost disappeared with the mass-market package holiday, and some agency chains seemed to develop a 'holiday supermarket' concept, in which customers chose their holiday from brochures on racks and then booked it from a counter. However, a variety of social and economic changes have now contrived to bring this aspect to the fore once more, particularly the advent of multiple no-frills airlines.
Poste by
dir.xml-rss.com