MADRID: Europe’s travel agents will have to turn into specialized bargain-hunters and gatherers of added value if they are to survive a radical change in their habitat.

Abundant food in the form of fat airline commissions for selling tickets is no longer available, industry spokesmen say.

On top of that, customers are increasingly using the Internet to do their own scavenging for tickets, hotels and car hire — cutting out the agencies as middlemen altogether.

“The days of seven or eight percent commissions simply for issuing a ticket are over...travel agencies are going to have to provide a real service,” a Spanish airline source said.

Across Europe, commissions are disappearing. Finnair eliminated them completely from September, British Airways is cutting British agency payments to one per cent from December and Spanish airline Iberia is negotiating a hefty cut, to cite just a few.

In Italy, travel agency commissions on Alitalia’s domestic flights are three per cent, down from nine per cent just three years ago, said Christian Pitrelli, the owner of Mazzarino Viaggi, a large agency in the centre of Rome.

International flight commissions have fallen to seven per cent from nine per cent and will drop another point next year.

Commission cuts and Internet sales are squeezing agency business in Germany too, said Anke Dannler, spokeswoman for Rewe Touristik, one of the country’s biggest travel agency operators after TUI and Thomas Cook.

“Different companies are adapting in different ways,” she said. “Some see their future specialising in luxury or long-distance holidays that the Internet cannot offer. Others are attempting to compete directly by offering cheaper deals of their own.”

Felix Arevalo, director general of the Spanish travel agents’ association AEDAVE, said the picture is not so bleak. On one hand, airlines still need agencies to sell their tickets and on the other, agencies are improving their services.

“This is a bit like what happened to the candlemakers when electric light became available. They didn’t go out of business. They discovered that by making decorative candles they could make more money,” he said.

“We shouldn’t get things out of context. Internet ticket sales in Europe are less than four percent (of the total) and they’re expected to be at most six percent in 2006.”

Iberia still sells 85 per cent of its tickets through travel agencies, Arevalo added.

AIRLINES’ FRIENDS, NOT ENEMIES: Pitrelli said that even if online sales have picked up, airlines still have to rely on bricks-and-mortar travel agencies for much of their business. But hundreds of agencies have gone out of business because of the commission cuts, he added.

“Airlines are treating us like the enemy when actually we’re offering them a service,” he said.

In many countries the rapid growth of low-cost airlines, which only sell tickets direct and pay no commissions, threatens both the dominant airlines and travel agents.

Some German agencies are adapting by booking tickets with budget airlines and charging a fee to the customer for doing so, Rewe Touristik’s Dannler said.

Both she and Carlos Sanchez, owner of a small central Madrid agency, Viajes Alvar, said many travellers are uneasy about the security of Internet booking and still prefer to use a travel agency.—Reuters