• What's ticked?
• Accolades
• Contact us

c o l u m n s

• Cheap Charlie
• ChrisCrossings
• Err Travel
• Leocha
• Travel Notes
• Archives

s u b s c r i b e

• Elliott's E-Mail, a free weekly newsletter, is your insider resource for moneysaving ideas.

First name

Last name

E-mail address

Subscribe
Cancel

• Like what you see? Now you can become an underwriter.

a l s o

• Ticked e-mail
• Visit Tripso
• Referring sites
• Home

s e a r c h

• Find a story.



(c) Elliott Publishing.

Online Agency Blues
Kirby's Korner · June 11, 1999

If you're an owner or employee of an online travel agency, these are scary times.

The good news is, if you're like most of us and simply buy tickets online -- without worrying about the action behind the scenes -- you can find better deals and more convenience than you've seen before. I wouldn't call the online purchasing process easy yet.

With even the most direct buying systems, you still have to boot up a computer, log on to the Internet, find the online agency, remember you user name and password, figure out arcane city abbreviations, plan your route, buy the ticket, and worry whether the airline will know who you are when you show up at the gate.

A phone call to a good brick-and-mortar travel agency is a lot simpler.

But the concerns of those of us trying to plan a trip pale when compared to what investors of and workers at online agencies are going through. Some of them are wondering where the next paycheck will come from. Take Biztravel.com. It's one of two online agencies -- the other is Trip.com -- designed to attract "unmanaged" business travelers, or folks who don't have to go through travel arrangers at their companies before taking off on a trip.

This constitutes about a quarter of the American travel industry. Even with that healthy audience size, Biztravel obviously is in trouble. John Williams, who headed the company since it started in its current form three years ago, left in recent weeks. James Norrod, installed by investors over Williams just three months ago, departed at the same time. No one at the company is talking, but investors clearly are nervous.

Or take Preview Travel, one of the stars of the online leisure travel field, available through America Online's members-only service and its main Web site, Excite, and elsewhere in cyberspace. Preview's previous president, Ken Orton, left a few weeks ago to follow his entrepreneurial urges. And the fellow who headed Preview's travel agency operations, David Lambert, moved north from San Francisco to Seattle in February to take over his own Internet company.

All this movement behind the scenes is inevitable.

The travel industry started selling tickets through the World Wide Web four years ago, and the online companies are beginning to mature. Investors want a return on their money, and pioneers are itching to try something new. The changes don't affect our day-to-day activities.

Who knows -- or cares -- who's in charge of most stores we use? But we'll see some familiar online agencies disappear even as newer names take over. The effect won't be as quick -- or as pretty -- as the cherry blossom season now at its peak near my Washington area home. But don't be too surprised if you have to change bookmarks for favorite online sellers.

David Kirby is the editor of the Interactive Travel Report. You can reach him at dbkirby@pressroom.com.