Originally Posted by
YVR Cockroach
Its certainly the marketing model, or perhaps the realty of the market. B 'n M TAs certainly have a lot of overhead. It'd seem that cruising (unlike car rentals and hotels, especially, air travel) is the last bastion for rather-generous commissions to be earned, due to the substantial portion of the market that seems to be fixated on a controlled environment, and/or require handholding. As such, cruiseco excursions and transfers are exorbitantly priced to take all risk and uncertainly away. Of course, there may be a (smaller) market of those too busy to deal with arranging anything. I imagine a lot of cruisers just want to book and have the TA (and cruiseco) handle everything while many of us here just treat the cruise like another flight or hotel.
If only cruisecos would treat their fares like airlines (no rhyme or reason at times, I know, + contracted pricing) at a best and final price for the masses and let those ho need handholding and arrangement pay for it as an extra.
I can’t say I’ve studied the history of brick and mortar travel agencies and the emergence of Internet agencies in detail but my impression is that the change probably started in the mid to late 1990’s/early 2000’s. Personally while I was participating in a cruise forum as early as 1993 on AOL that eventually would become Cruise Critic I really hadn’t thought much about booking a cruise any other way than through a brick and mortar agency/agent. It wasn’t until 2004 when a fellow cruiser on a Holland America cruise talked to me about how I had booked my cruise and my alternatives. He introduced me to my first Internet agency and while not with that agency now I haven’t booked a cruise with a brick and mortar since. As it was even before I changed to booking through Internet agencies I was already making my own arrangements. A lot of that was because I traveled extensively for work and back then our agency had no centralized travel office so I was experienced in booking flights, hotels, and rental cars.
Concurrently as part of a local restaurant/bar trivia team I had met a local travel agent. She was one of many agents of a large agency had seven or so different locations here in town. Can’t say they were huge but they easily dominated the local travel business. They’d hold annual travel fair with a heavy emphasis on cruising. Almost every line would send representatives handing out brochures and small gifts, giving presentations, door prizes, etc. She knew we didn’t book through her but she’d always tell about the fairs and asked that if we could please attend and register with her as our agent. Around 2008 she started complaining about the drop off in business but mainly attributed that to the downturn in the economy with a helping nudge by the ever growing Internet. The last fair I remember was 2011 and the closing of one by one of her agency’s satellite offices. Today they have only what was the main office with a hand full of agents. While they still book vacation travel including cruises most of their business is corporate business travel. Sadly my agent friend suffered a fatal heart attack five years ago so not only lost a friend but also my insider on the state of the brick and mortar travel agency business.