The Great Divide in Researching Travel

Did you know that our dependency on websites as an information tool, as the “go-to “source for the details we need before making any major purchase, sometimes make us less informed as consumers than we were before the Internet existed?

UNIGLOBE Travel experts reveal that the ease and convenience of shopping for flights, hotels, rental cars and other travel products online actually masks a few crucial, ongoing truths.

The internet – friend or foe?

The answer is…it’s both! The internet is actually a very very big “pipe” to an infinitely expanding universe

of websites featuring millions of flight and hotel (and other) options, but it’s actually only one channel through which you might obtain information about buying travel. Did you know that when you enter a date and a destination into a website search screen, no single travel website will return every possible result? If you can’t find a seat on the flight you want using a website, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a seat available. As demand increases, airlines often release more seats for sale, but it may take a few hours for a website to catch up. Or the airlines and hotel companies my withhold inventory and pricing from some channels as a way of improving their revenue yields through selective distribution across the world.

So where IS the best place to find all the information?

Meet the modern travel agency – where the best options can be found by blending online channels with an expert consultant/agent using both skills and tools to see a bigger landscape of options. Expert agents use the Internet for research too, but they also have at their fingertips a much bigger, more diverse toolbox including agent-only resources such as the GDS (the ‘global distribution system” – a system fed directly by the airlines, hoteliers and other travel suppliers) and also a private system featuring fares sourced by a network of living, breathing contacts around the world with ‘local’ knowledge and “local” market fares and inventory. When a UNIGLOBE travel expert searches for an airfare, he or she actually searches several sources or “channels” at once – as a result, travelers stand a much better chance of receiving well-researched travel options. What does this mean? Simply put, it could mean better options, lower airfares and improved availability.