Continuing our review of the data produced by the Ski Club of Great Britain in their annual Snowsports Analysis, in this post we look at how consumers are booking their holidays.
Online and phone bookings up
According to the Ski Club’s figures, online bookings have increased by 54% since 1994, admittedly from a small base, to 278,000.
Direct bookings to tour operators by phone have also increased by 16%, probably as customers have researched online, but decided to make their booking over the phone, by talking to experienced sales staff.
Travel agents don’t sell ski any more
The stand-out statistic however is the decimation of travel agent sales. Almost 240,000 fewer people booked their holidays via travel agents in 2011 compared to 2004 – a fall of 79% from 300,000 to just over 60,000.
Obviously the rise of the internet has led a to reduction in the number of shops. Only this week Thomas Cook announced plans to close 200 of their shops.
Travel agents (excluding specialist ski agencies) have never had a great product knowledge of ski. Many shops have stories of agents hiding to avoid taking a ski enquiry, or trying to palm it off onto a colleague.
Yet despite these limitations, travel agencies often brought skiing and snowboarding to a new audience. The fall in their influence has not been compensated with online booking, and perhaps more importantly, they were also influential in bringing new consumers into the market.
The travel agent, despite the stereotypes, will be missed by the snowsports industry.
2 comments
Keith Handy says:
Dec 16, 2011
The statistics might suggest a shopfront helps get new people into snowsports, but if you trend percentages of total sales I think you will see that the internet is continuing to gain ground in a recently shrinking market, with perhaps the high street reaching a sustainable level. A question is why is the total market shrinking?
From what we can see in the total market it started to shrink noticeably in 2009, arguably at the start of the recession before the current economical crisis. Snowsports are traditionally at the top end of the income market, therefore shrinkage may be due to those on the margin of affluence, starting to feel the pinch. The total market now is not significantly different to seven years ago, but the route to market has transformed and perhaps stabilised on the high street.
iain says:
Dec 19, 2011
It’s true Keith that the percentages have changed significantly. Online has gone up from 15% to 26%, and High St has gone down from 25% to 6% at the same time.
So I’m not sure it’s stabilised on the high street – that business has fallen away completely. What is true though is that the change since the market peak in 07/08 is less dramatic. By then the High Street had already fallen to just a 9% share of all sales.