Travel agent monitoring and management

This paper assesses the influence of travel agents on the demand for scheduled services from regional airports. A telephone survey, following up one conducted in 1992, reveals an improvement in agent information provision for a scheduled service from Cardiff to Brussels. Reasons for improvements include the length of time the service had operated and the marketing of the service under the BA brand. One-fifth of agents still gave inaccurate advice. The importance of airports and airlines monitoring the performance of their distribution channels is explored. New opportunities offered by the Internet to improve distribution channel effectiveness are presented.