Who uses travel agents?

Someone recently asked: Who really uses travel agents these day. Hasn't everything moved to Internet based sales?

My response is that travel agents are still the leading distributors of travel products and services.

Travel agents sell:

87% of cruises
81% of all tours and packages
51% of all airline tickets
47% of all hotel stays
45% of all car rentals

Agents are the only unbiased professionals who can sort through nearly 100,000 daily changes in airfares alone.

My source was the 2004 Travel Industry Survey/Travel which provides some dated data but we haven't really seen drastic percentage shifts in the distribution patterns.

I am going to do some investigating and try to obtain more current data which I'll share.

Happy travels!