14% of travel managed by travel agencies is business travel
The share of corporate travel managed by travel agencies in our country amounts to 14%, according to the II Strategic Study of the sector, prepared by Amadeus Spain and ACAVE. The penetration rate of national agencies in the tourism market is close to 38%. Client visits account for nearly half of all business trips.
According to the study, Spanish agencies are involved in more than 32 million trips a year. Most of them, around 28 million, are made for vacation purposes and 4.6 million (14%) for business matters, in both cases mainly to domestic destinations. Business travelers move mainly to visit clients or suppliers (43.9% of travelers), attend events (22.6%) or participate in training (22.3%).
F&IACUTE
The products typically contracted by users of physical travel agencies differ according to travel motivation. Corporate travelers mainly buy hotels (15.2%), insurance (14.6%), airline tickets (14.6%), airline tickets (15.2%), airline tickets (14.6%);n (11.6%), car rental (11.6%) and other products or services (15.9%).
The main reason for those who opt for offline is thepersonalized deal (17.5%), greater security/trust than the Internet (12.3%), the perception (12.3%), the perceptionof greater security/trust than the Internet (12.3%);n de una mayor facilidad en el proceso de reserva y pago (11.5%) y la inclinación a ser asesorado por profesionales experimentados (10.5%).
Users of physical travel agencies show a high level of satisfaction with the service they receive from them: 82.3% say they are very or fairly satisfied with the service they receive.
When choosing an agency, whether for vacation or business travel, travelers agree that they especially value price and product quality. In business travel, priority is given to the 24-hour service (8.9%) and the existing offers (8.1%).
As for the valuation of products, business travelers consider the most important is the booking of flights (77% consider it very or fairly important), the booking of accommodation (75.3%), management visited (61.7%) and notification of alerts and warnings (64.3%).
ONLINE AGENCIES
Regarding Internet usage habits and preferences, the research indicates that before contracting a product it is usual to look at more than three websites, which are generally always the same (68.3% of cases).
The convenience (12.5%), getting a better price (10.6%), the existence of more offers and promotions (9.9%), speed (9.9%) and comparison between prices on different websites (9.7%) are the reasons why domestic travelers go online.
The aspects best valued by users in relation to the process of choosing a website to contract a trip are: (average rating 7.8), the ability to solve problems encountered during the trip (average rating 7.7) and the provision of all necessary information (average rating 7.7).
EMPLOYMENT AND REVENUE
The study commissioned by Amadeus Espa a and ACAVE confirms that the sector has overcome the destruction of the business fabric that occurred during the crisis. There are currently around 4,500 travel agencies operating in Spain, representing 9,500 points of sale. Madrid, Cataluña and Andalucía concentrate 55% of the travel agencies and 53% of the existing points of sale in Spain.
The average sales of the agencies in the last fiscal year slightly exceeded five million euros, almost 300,000 euros more than the previous year. There is, however, a wide dispersion in the figures: while the company with the highest sales recorded an amount in excess of 2 billion euros, there are 200 agencies that reported sales of less than 10,000 euros in the last fiscal year.