travel agents

By the end of 2012, one-third of the world's travel sales will be booked online. But the majority of bookings still happen through the traditional brick-and-mortar travel agents, which is why Expedia's new Travel Agent Affiliate Program is a smart growth move for the OTA.

Online travel portal Expedia began doing business in India almost two years ago, and is now scaling up operations there. By forming partnerships with local suppliers, Expedia hopes to jump to fourth place in the market in less than a year. Here's how it plans to go about it.

Mapmaker Rand McNally, looking to diversify, bought Tripology.com, a website that puts live, human travel specialists to work for you, putting together travel deals you won't want to miss. Founder John Peters says 2010 is the year of value -- don't settle for "cheap."

Now I get it.Travel agents. Maybe travel web sites have seemingly made them obsolete to a large portion of the public, but I just returned from a four-day summer vacation, having used my first travel agent, and now I'm a convert.I'm not an expert on the topic, and obviously my one great experience...

This post is part of our series on people, places and things finding new life in 2008. Travel agent may seem like an occupation of the past, like elevator operators and milkmen, but they're not only hanging on, some of them are thriving. In fact, the February/March issue of ShopSmart magazine,...