They have overcome the competition on the Internet and today see artificial intelligence, but the 4,200 “physical” travel agencies in France have not said their last word and highlight their experience and their advisors, “real people.”
“Internet is not enough,” said Marie-Charlotte, 73, crossed by AFP with her husband Eric, 75, at the exit of a world passenger agency in Paris. For their stay in Laos, these travel lovers prefer to contact the agency, “very serious”, for “details about the transport and hotels of the site.”
The couple did not use artificial intelligence (AI). “We use it very little, we are not the generation,” he laughs, Marie-Charlotte laughs. In younger generations, according to a survey for the Edreams Odigeo platform, 92% of children under 34 used artificial intelligence tools for travel purposes in the last 12 months.
“Quest our lives”
The theme of artificial intelligence, in particular the generative AI (with tools such as Chatgpt) occupies a series of conversations at the IFTM fair for tourism professionals held until Thursday night in Paris.
“Today there is no Congress, a seminar, which is not on the subject of artificial intelligence because our lives are set upside down as the Internet has changed the mode of operation,” says Olivia Calvin, 40, commercial director of the world’s climate tourist operator, which sells tourist stays to travel agencies.
The group, launched 31 years ago under the leadership of Christine Crispin, Olivia Calvin’s mother, selling trips to internet agencies, also has her own physical agency open in Marseille during the Covid pandemie, Sozame of Travel.
This agency today represents “5 to 6%” of the 55 million euros in the billing in climates in the world and allows “to be linked to the field”, according to Olivia Calvin. “Customers come to an agency as soon as their expectations are a bit sophisticated: when you have several flights to take, whether it establishes a large budget, whether you go with your family or if you have to change the airport once,” said Valérie Bond, president of travel companies (EDV), which brings together 3,000 tourism professionals.
“We need to discuss content”
France now has “approximately 4,200 agencies, representing more than 5,000 points of sale,” she says.
“When you buy a circuit (remain in the form of a), a vacation between 2,000 and 4,000 euros (per person), must discuss the content” with someone, confirms Cyrille Fradin, president of the Karavel group, which includes Fram and its 180 physical agencies in France.
And “we will open it again,” he says: a travel agency “costs more” than a website, but “it is still profitable.” As proof, the Fram agency in La Roche-Sur-Yon: “The same day of the opening, there were more than 120 visits and in two months more than 800 people had gone to the agency,” according to him.
Guarantees in case of hazards
The agency also represents a certain guarantee of not being wrong: “It is not that the online agencies are less good,” according to the mediator Jean-Pierre Mas, but “people do not know how to manage with an online sale, they are wrong on behalf of or date and cannot correct again.”
According to the Tourism Mediator report, in 2024, 78.8% of the 15,757 references for disputes on online sales of travel concern, against only 16% at a physical point of sale and 3.3% by phone. Customers also appreciate the guarantee offered by a travel agency.
The Travel Agency, subject to the Tourism Code, for example, has the obligation to provide assistance in case of difficulties during stay. And after the Covid pandemic, the agencies felt the “need” of customers to connect with “real people”, according to Valérie Boned.
Source: BFM TV
