Travel agents, tour operators

The Travel Industry is a complex relationship of suppliers all looking for your business. At the front end, the one you know, is the local travel agent - that's usually where you go to get the information you need.

Taking home a pile of brochures to pore over is the next step. Your decision will be influenced by what you know, what you want and which brochure will provide that.

Every year the travel industry spends millions of pounds producing glossy brochures and exciting advertisements to influence you. The relationship you establish with your travel agent is triangular, between you, the travel agent and the tour operator. Tour operators produce the brochure, contract with the airlines and the accommodation suppliers to provide what you want. The travel agent then sells the operators' products. Not that you think of your holiday as a product - but it is: a carefully put-together package of flights and accommodation at a marketable price.

The competition in the industry is enormous. Airlines vie for seats; hotels and apartments for bed-nights; car rental firms for hire; coaches for tours; venues for visitors; shops for goods; banks for currency. The biggest industry in the world wants your business - and it seeks it by using the media in both over-the-line and under-the-line ways.

Over-the-line methods mean, basically, advertising; under-the-line are things like travel writing in newspapers, magazines and books; television and radio programmes and endorsements. An example of how they can work together happened a few years ago when Budget Travel ran an outdoor advertising campaign. The picture showed the back of a thong-bikini clad model, which appeared in a number of media, including buses and bus stops. The ad was provocative and the reaction was enormous. Complaints were made to the Advertising Standards Authority and it was widely discussed on the radio and in newspapers. Budget benefited by the overall interest in the campaign. Competition between airlines has increased hugely in the past 10 years with the introduction of low-cost carriers as a result of liberalisation of air transport, partly under the influence of the European Union. The consumer is the winner.

Today the busiest destination from Ireland is London, and you have a choice of eight airlines flying to five airports. Ten years ago it was two airlines to one airport, and the prices - well, they were much dearer.

It's a big business, but travel agents, tour operators and their suppliers work on very tight margins. Travel agents sell package holidays for 8 per cent commission, airline seats for 9 per cent and hotel rooms for 8 to 10 per cent. Tour operators, in turn, usually work on 10 to 18 per cent. Out of these commissions must come the cost of staff, provision of offices, advertising, brochure production, telephones, accounting systems, computer equipment and postage. The industry relies on large volumes of business to make money. And so it goes back to selling to each other and influencing you and me on where we go.