A Study on Quantifying Customers’ Preferences and Experiences and how to move forward on Airline Reservations & Ticketing: Online or Offline?
Author(s)
Atiya Parveen* (Lecturer of Marketing and Quality Management, College of Business Administration, Al Yamamah University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), *Corresponding author's Email
Citation
Parveen, Atiya (2017), “A Study on Quantifying Customers’ Preferences and Experiences and how to move forward on Airline Reservations & Ticketing: Online or Offline?”, MERC Global’s International Journal of Management, Vol. 5, Issue 4, pp. 123-135.
Article history
Submitted: January 10, 2017, Revision received: May 28, 2017, Accepted: June 20, 2017
The travel industry is an ever-changing and fast-paced business. It has been the current norm for families to make travel as their means to “catch-up and share memories” with their loved ones. The dawn of the age of the Internet had made a significant contribution to the ever-growing travel populace. It had opened multiple avenues of places of interests and travel destinations that were only available before in travel brochures and even in encyclopedias. This study emphasises the preferences of the travellers in making their bookings. It will try to discover the different reasons why travellers prefer to book their travel using the traditional travel agent and the online travel agent. It will also try to show the many aspects and considerations that the travellers are taking into account before they finalise their travel booking. However, this study will not try to determine which travel agent is the best, but rather it would try to somewhat point out the advantages and disadvantages of one from the other. Enumerating the pros and cons of the different travel agents, this study would try to recommend how each one could benefit from the other. In concluding, the respondents preferred to book their travel both online and with traditional travel agents. The targeted audience was not fully convinced of the features and processes that the traditional and online travel agents use. There are issues like security, a multitude of information, outdated resources, and poor customer relations are some of the issues that were of concern for the travellers.
Keywords
Customer Pretences, E-booking, Online travel agency, Metros, Gen X.
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