Coop Travel is the latest to unveil its vision of the future with its two concept stores.
The seamless joining together of shops, call-centres and website is the Holy Grail everyone is chasing to make best use of existing shops and their related overheads and the more cost effective online distribution - if you can get consumers to convert.
Advances in technology now enable consultants to see which customers are online, where they came from and where they are in the booking journey.Thomas Cook unveiled something similar with its live web chat service for a predetermined set of customers.
Rival Thomson talked about diverting online customers to its shop staff during quieter trading periods.
What's interesting about Coop Travel's approach is its customer service ethos - borrowing the principles of Fred Reichheld's Ultimate Question for its reward programme.
But the issues remain the same - can the connection between online and offline be bridged with clever technology, will online customers be tempted into a high-tech shop design and coffee shop environment and will there always be customers who want the hand-holding experience?
Coop Travel will spend the next couple of months evaluating the concept - we watch with interest!
I can't put my hands on the post now but last year I wrote a post about the future of travel agent shops, and I felt (and still do) that they need to bring in the social element within the shops.
Right now I walk into a shop, and I feel rushed, I don't feel I can spend the time looking through my options. Book shops have added coffee bar's within their shop floors and I wonder if agencies need to do something similar.
Darren
There is still plenty of travel products that the internet can't sell effectively, cruise being a huge example as well as complex flight itineraries. These products are often researched online but converted by humans in shops & call centres.
Interesting to see the effects of online and offline combined. I think the advantage of offline is more personal attention and communication. If failed in that way, the fancy shops will be less successful.
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