2009 was a challenging year in the travel business - but 2010 promises to be much better. That's the key finding in the latest year-end North American survey conducted by the Outside Sales Support Network (OSSN), the region's largest trade association of home-based travel retailers.Among 1,430 agents responding to the survey, 35 percent posted higher sales this year, but 43 percent saw a decrease in their 2009 bookings. Looking ahead to 2010, 85 percent predict that the new year will be successful for them, with 15 percent disagreeing.
OSSN's latest survey results capture a snapshot of the way these retailers operate their home-based travel businesses:
- 22 percent have their own merchant account to process credit card sales.
- 46 percent have their own errors and omissions/general liability insurance coverage (beyond any coverage provided by a host agency).
- 47 percent use their own branded Web domain names for email, instead of public-domain email systems such as Yahoo!.
The 2009 year-end survey also focused on three key topics that will affect home-based agents in 2010:
Hotel bookings
- Forty-nine percent of the agents said their clients "sometimes" tell them which properties to book, while 39 percent said their clients simply suggest locations.
- Three in four home-based agents book international hotel stays for their clients (the most important criteria: a good location, followed by quality, price, safety, brand name, and unique experience).
- Nine in 10 of these agents also book pre- and post-cruise hotel stays (only 10 percent reported that they never book them).
- Three in five home-based travel sellers now have their own Web sites.
- They split evenly in how they created their sites: 34 percent built it themselves, 34 percent used ready-made site designs, and 32 percent used a professional.
- Almost 40 percent reported that their sites currently generate leads for their travel businesses.
- Facebook is the #1 choice among home-based agents currently using social media sites, followed by LinkedIn and Twitter.
- Seven in 10 responding agents said they plan to use social media sites in 2010.
- Those agents saying they do not plan to use social media next year gave these reasons: They're not familiar with the applications (34 percent), they don't have time (28 percent), or they're not aware of any benefits (23 percent).