What Is A Travel Agent?
Every industry has its jargon, and if you’ve been around travel for any length of time, you know how much we relish our lingo. Industry-specific terminology can be an essential tool to facilitate shared understanding. RevPAR, ADR, RPM and load factor, for example, are four important business performance metrics used in the hospitality and airline industries, respectively. But terminology in dynamic, fast-changing industries can also be confusing and even controversial; key terms can take on multiple meanings, or suffer from manipulation by corporate marketers. One need look no further than “dynamic packaging,” one of the hottest buzzwords for nearly a decade. Ask 10 “experts” what dynamic packaging is, and still today you should expect no fewer than 10 different answers. When PhoCusWright undertook research for its recent study of the travel agency distribution channel—PhoCusWright’s Travel Agency Distribution Landscape: 2006-2009 —we immediately encountered significant challenges in h
