Tourist attractions and entertainment

Major tourist attractions include large cities like London, Moscow, Paris, New York; seashore areas in warm climates like the Caribbean and the Mediterranean; and ski resorts like those in Switzerland.

Actually, any place can become a tourist destination as long as it is different from the place where the traveller usually lives. Paris may not be a tourist attraction to a Parisian, but for a New Yorker it may have many charms.

People travel for various reasons, and there are numerous attractions that appeal to a wide variety of tastes.

In addition to being major business centers, the large cities offer attractions and entertainment for all kinds of people.

Cultural events occur frequently, including theatrical and opera performances, concerts, ballet, art exhibitions, to name a few.

There is also a wide selection of restaurants and a great variety of night life in urban centers. Shopping is an attraction for many visitors, whether in the great department stores of New York and Tokyo or in the boutiques of Paris and London.

The big cities also offer a unique atmosphere and history. One of the advantages of the big cities is their ability to absorb large numbers of tourists. These cities have an existing infrastructure that is capable of caring for the needs of millions of people; and many of the attractions that tourists visit have been developed primarily for the benefit of the inhabitants. Therefore, tourism is an economic plus for many big cities because it increases income from existing facilities, both public and private.

The large cities of course do not have a monopoly on architectural or historical monuments. Smaller towns and rural areas throughout the world have attractions of this kind that tourists visit.

One excellent example is Machu Picchi, the lost city of the Incas in Peru, which is a remote and difficult to reach area.

The ruins of Machu Picchi, a tourist attraction that has become accessible because of modern means of transportation, are visited by more and more tourists every year.

Natural scenery is also an attraction for tourists. Millions of people have visited wild areas in Africa, Middle East, Nepal and other places where they can see the wonders of nature.

Holiday resorts usually attract tourists because of their sunny beaches, their snow-covered ski-slopes, or their golf courses. In addition, they frequently offer other kinds of entertainment to their guests. At the ski resorts, it is often an atmosphere of informality, at a cosmopolitan resort like Miami Beach, it may be night clubs and stage shows. In San Juan, in addition to legal gambling, there are historical sites in the old city or tropical rain forests only a few miles away. Many of the resorts give instruction in scuba diving combined with visits to coral reefs. And of course most of them have a variety of stores and souvenir shops.

Shopping has been made a tourist magnet by government policy in some countries. Handicrafts appeal to touring shoppers in many places, where the souvenir shop that sells this kind of merchandise is as much a feature of most tourist areas as the hotel. Most people who visit these countries take home at least one sample of the local handicraft.

A cruise ship is a floating hotel, one which the passengers cannot leave outside a port. Most cruises therefore try to keep up a party atmosphere throughout the voyage, with games, dancing, costume parties, gambling and whatever other activities can be devised within a rather limited space. Entertainers are often hired for the entire trip, and they are often hit-name performers.

Throughout history, markets have given performers a chance to entertain. Many people have gone to trade fairs as much for amusement as for buying and selling. Dating from the crystal Palace in London in 1812, many countries exhibit their products at big world’s fairs in the midst of a sort of carnival atmosphere. Another modern development is the amusement park, a carnival with a variety of games, thrill rides, magic shows, and other kinds of entertainment.

A recent development is the theme park, an amusement park that is designed around a unifying concept. The two huge Disney enterprises, Disneyland in California and Disney world in Florida, are the most successful examples of this kind of created tourist attraction. From a commercial point of view, they have the enormous advantage as they are designed to appeal to entire family groups rather than to any particular age level.

Many tourists don’t want to be identified as tourists. These independent travellers try to visit the attractions they want to see on their own rather than a member of a tour group.

The majority of tourists, however, travel in groups, with their entertainment and sightseeing included in the package. Many tour groups are formed around some kind of special purpose, such as eating a series of meals at the leading gourmet restaurants in France.

The tours that are put together for resort holidays rather than special groups often offer some entertainment or sightseeing in the package.

The sightseeing business is another part of the tourist industry that has grown rapidly in recent years. It includes selecting the sights that would appeal to tourists and then providing transportation, meals, opportunities for shopping.

Some of the tours are part of the total travel service that is offered by such companies as Thomas Cook and American Express. A good deal of the excursion business, however, involves local enterprises whose services are sold through representatives in the tourist hotels or travel agents in the area. A large number of sightseeing trips are part-day or one-day excursions to local points of interest. A guide has a prepared talk during which he gives information about the sights that will be visited, but he must also be able to answer questions and to deal with the human problems that may arise. If the tour occupies a full day, meals are prearranged at a hotel or restaurant.

A few tourists do not want to travel in groups. Instead, they prefer the comfort of a guide to show them around and make arrangements for them. For a price, these services are available in many tourist centers. This might be described as a personalized tour for those who can afford it. As with group excursions or tours, arrangements can ordinarily be made through the visitor’s hotel or by a local travel agent.

Familiarity and boredom are the enemies of tourism. Surveys show that people who spend two weeks at a resort are generally more satisfied with their holiday than those who remain three weeks or more. This means that the entire range of amusement and entertainment available is an important factor in keeping the customers satisfied. The more variety is offered to tourists, the more pleased they are likely to be.

TRAVEL AGENCIES

The British company Cox & Kings is sometimes said to be the oldest travel agency in the world, but this rests upon the services that the original bank, established in 1758, supplied to its wealthy clients. The modern travel agency first appeared in the second half of the 19th century. Thomas Cook, in addition to developing the package tour, established a chain of agencies in the last quarter of the 19th century, in association with the Midland Railway. They not only sold their own tours to the public, but in addition, represented other tour companies. Other British pioneer travel agencies were Dean and Dawson, the Polytechnic Touring Association and the Co-operative Wholesale Society. The oldest travel agency in North America is Brownell Travel; on July 4, 1887, Walter T. Brownell led ten travelers on a European tour, setting sail from New York on the SS Devonia.Travel agencies became more commonplace with the development of commercial aviation, starting in the 1920s. Originally, travel agencies largely catered to middle and upper class customers, but the post-war boom in mass-market package holidays resulted in travel agencies on the main streets of most British towns, catering to a working class clientèle, looking for a convenient way to book overseas beach holidays.

Operations

As the name implies, a travel agency's main function is to act as an agent, that is to say, selling travel products and services on behalf of a supplier. Consequently, unlike other retail businesses, they do not keep a stock in hand. A package holiday or a ticket is not purchased from a supplier unless a customer requests that purchase. The holiday or ticket is supplied to them at a discount. The profit is therefore the difference between the advertised price which the customer pays and the discounted price at which it is supplied to the agent. This is known as the commission. A British travel agent would consider a 10-12% commission as a good arrangement. In Australia, all individuals or companies that sell tickets are required to be licensed as a travel agent.

In some countries, airlines have stopped giving commission to travel agencies. Therefore, travel agencies are now forced to charge a percentage premium or a standard flat fee, per sale. However, some companies still give them a set percentage for selling their product. Major tour companies can afford to do this, because if they were to sell a thousand trips at a cheaper rate, they still come out better than if they sell a hundred trips at a higher rate. This process benefits both parties.

Other commercial operations are undertaken, especially by the larger chains. These can include the sale of in-house insurance, travel guide books and timetables, car rentals, and the services of an on-site Bureau de change, dealing in the most popular holiday currencies.

The majority of travel agents have felt the need to protect themselves and their clients against the possibilities of commercial failure, either their own or a supplier's. They will advertise the fact that they are surety bonded, meaning in the case of a failure, the customers are guaranteed either an equivalent holiday to that which they have lost or if they prefer, a refund. Many British and American agencies and tour operators are bonded with the International Air Transport Association (IATA),^[2] for those who issue air tickets, Air Travel Organisers' Licensing (ATOL) for those who order tickets in, the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) or the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), for those who sell package holidays on behalf of a tour company.

A travel agent is supposed to offer impartial travel advice to the customer. However, this function almost disappeared with the mass-market package holiday and some agency chains seemed to develop a 'holiday supermarket' concept, in which customers choose their holiday from brochures on racks and then book it from a counter. Again, a variety of social and economic changes have now contrived to bring this aspect to the fore once more, particularly with the advent of multiple, no-frills, low-cost airlines.

Commissions

Most travel agencies operate on a commission-basis, meaning that the compensation from the airlines, car rentals, cruise lines, hotels, railways, sightseeing tours and tour operators, etc., is expected in form of a commission from their bookings. Most often, the commission consists of a set percentage of the sale.In the United States, most airlines pay no commission at all to travel agencies. In this case, an agency usually adds a service fee to the net price.

THE INTERNET THREAT

With general public access to the Internet, many airlines and other travel companies began to sell directly to passengers. As a consequence, airlines no longer needed to pay the commissions to travel agents on each ticket sold. Since 1997, travel agencies have gradually been disintermediated, by the reduction in costs caused by removing layers from the package holiday distribution network.^[4][5] However, travel agents remain dominant in some areas such as cruise vacations where they represent 77% of bookings and 73% of packaged travel.^[6]

In response, travel agencies have developed an internet presence of their own by creating travel websites, with detailed information and online booking capabilities. Several major online travel agencies include: Expedia, Voyages-sncf.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, CheapTickets, Priceline, CheapOair and Hotwire.com. Travel agencies also use the services of the major computer reservations systems companies, also known as Global Distribution Systems (GDS), including: SABRE, Amadeus CRS, Galileo CRS and Worldspan, which is a subsidiary of Travelport, allowing them to book and sell airline tickets, hotels, car rentals and other travel related services. Some online travel websites allow visitors to compare hotel and flight rates with multiple companies for free. They often allow visitors to sort the travel packages by amenities, price, and proximity to a city or landmark.

Travel agents have applied dynamic packaging tools to provide fully bonded (full financial protection) travel at prices equal to or lower than a member of the public can book online. As such, the agencies' financial assets are protected in addition to professional travel agency advice.

All travel sites that sell hotels online work together with GDS, suppliers and hotels directly to search for room inventory. Once the travel site sells a hotel, the site will try to get a confirmation for this hotel. Once confirmed or not, the customer is contacted with the result. This means that booking a hotel on a travel website will not necessarily result in an instant answer. Only some hotels on a travel website can be confirmed instantly (which is normally marked as such on each site). As different travel websites work with different suppliers together, each site has different hotels that it can confirm instantly. Some examples of such online travel websites that sell hotel rooms are Expedia, Orbitz and WorldHotel-Link.

The comparison sites, such as Kayak.com, TripAdvisor and SideStep search the resellers site all at once to save time searching. None of these sites actually sell hotel rooms.

Often tour operators have hotel contracts, allotments and free sell agreements which allow for the immediate confirmation of hotel rooms for vacation bookings.

Mainline service providers are those that actually produce the direct service, like various hotels chains or airlines that have a website for online bookings. Portals will serve a consolidator of various airlines and hotels on the internet. They work on a commission from these hotels and airlines. Often, they provide cheaper rates than the mainline service providers as these sites get bulk deals from the service providers. A meta search engine on the other hand, simply culls data from the internet on real time rates for various search queries and diverts traffic to the mainline service providers for an online booking. These websites usually do not have their own booking engine.

CAREERS

With the many people switching to self-service internet websites, the number of available jobs as travel agents is decreasing. Most jobs that become available are from older travel agents retiring. Counteracting the decrease in jobs due to internet services is the increase in the number of people travelling. Since 1995, many travel agents have exited the industry, and relatively few young people have entered the field due to less competitive salaries.^[7] However, others have abandoned the 'brick and mortar' agency for a home-based business to reduce overheads and those who remain have managed to survive by promoting other travel products such as cruise lines and train excursions or by promoting their ability to aggressively research and assemble complex travel packages on a moment's notice, essentially acting as a very advanced concierge.

TRAVEL AGENT

Travel agents help travellers with information with the aim to make the best possible travel arrangements. They offer advice and make arrangements for transportation, accommodation, car rentals and tours. They make bookings for cruise lines. Resorts use travel agents to promote their travel packages.

They are expected to know about tourist destinations and be able to advise travellers about them (required documents, weather, local customs, attractions, events, currency exchange rates). They gain this information by visiting the destinations themselves to test the quality of the hotels, comfort and cleanliniess, but they also use a number of published and computer-based sources of information (departure and arrival times, fares, quality of hotels, group discounts). They often make presentations to special-interest groups. Many travel agents specialize in specific destinations or in selling to particular groups. On-line reservations are powerful competition, but most people still like to arrange their journeys by means of personal contact with a travel agent.

The work of a travel agent is mostly carried out in an office, conferrring with clients, filling out forms, contacting hotels and airlines and promoting tours. They work with computers all the time and are often under pressure during travel emergencies and peak vacation times. Therefore, communication and computer skills are essential for a travel agent. The education required is a high school diploma, but many travel agencies demand a college degree and business experience. Training is usually provided on the job. Travel agents must be well- organized, accurate, professional and courteous when dealing with clients. Personal travel experience is also very useful.