Taking Stock
Post September 11

 Editorial by Patrick Totty

Almost seven months after Sept. 11, the future of travel is taking shape. There’s a mixed bag of developments and trends to report: Travel is not as convenient as it used to be, but in many ways it is safer. Still, important segments of the industry, especially airlines and travel agents, are having a rough go.

Here’s our take on things:

The Public

What’s Good: Airport security is better now. Ticket and tour prices are still down, thanks to suppliers’ efforts to restore pre 9-11 demand.

What’s Not: Airport efficiency is a nightmare. Politicians are wrangling over whether citizens make better airport security screeners than non. In the meantime, security often is a long-running comedy of errors as low-paid, sometimes non-English-speaking, workers try to reason with harried travelers or occasionally engage in too-intimate pat-downs for contraband that leave passengers seething.

The Prognosis: Airlines are still in shock that their favorite patsies, businesspeople, are no longer willing to pay top dollar for atrocious service. Watch for price creep in tickets you can buy well in advance. Somebody has to pay for those fickle business types having discovered videoconferencing.

Travel Agents

What’s Good: Not much. To stop hemorrhaging dollars, the airlines have pulled travel agent commissions off the table, probably permanently. The silver lining here is that surviving agencies are pursuing specialty markets with a vengeance, building reputations among consumers as experts with connections. It’s a classic middleman ploy that could just work. 

What’s Not: While traditional travel agents charge a set fee for their services, thus insuring they have customers' best interests at heart, many online sites now pander to the best paying airline, thus cutting travelers’ choices and assuring that travelers are screwed as online mega-agencies cut backroom deals.

The Prognosis: Once consumers discover the airlines’ latest pricing scams, and the almost devilish complexities involved in trying to do everything themselves (it’s sort of like firing the cook and then wondering why it takes so long to cook a simple seven-course dinner), they’ll rediscover the virtues of the travel agent. Once they do, they’ll wonder why they ever wasted their precious time bypassing them.

Tour Hosts

What’s Good: Having patience and deep pockets, because those are what it will take for many operators to endure until a full travel rebound takes place. In the longer term, travelers are increasingly shying away from group travel (perceived as too dangerous and commoditized) and  looking for small-scale, specialized packages. This shift will open the door for tour operators who occupy wonderful little niches that nobody else can quite duplicate.

What’s Not: The continuing inability of great little operators to get noticed among the mega-operators who are nothing more than fronts or shills for major airlines, hotel chains and cruise lines.   

The Prognosis: The increasing number and sophistication of travelers worldwide continues to create a demand for specialists who can provide unique packages. As mass travel becomes almost totally commoditized, millions of people will seek customized travel that holds out the promise of artfulness, aesthetics and authenticity.

Travel Itself

What’s Good: The world is too big for terrorists and other disgruntled simpletons to kill travel for pleasure. New technologies will soon lessen check-in ordeals at airports. Airlines, as they lurch their way to economic sanity and begin charging more realistic (read: higher) fees for tickets, will still offer occasional bargains. After all, these are folks who still believe, like an 18th century doctor, that you can get rid of an illness by bleeding the patient, even if the patient is himself.

What’s Not: Airlines will get more expensive without getting any better. There will be fewer airlines as a combination of mismanagement, consumer resentment and inefficiency drive some carriers from the business. This will make the remaining airlines as arrogant as ever.

The Prognosis: Consumers will have a harder time than ever finding real values because of airlines’ need to raise prices even as they pretend through their online fronts that they are offering bargains. Look for the emergence of “tweener” airlines that are not luxurious, but for the higher upfront ticket prices they charge will actually deliver better on-time performance, comfort, amenities and treatment of passengers.

Niche travel agents, tour operators, airlines and travelers will be the wave of the future. 

Patrick Totty is editorial director of The Cultured Traveler.