Today in the United States there are about 13,000 travel retail locations, down from a peak of 34,000 in the mid-1990s.
It was thought that there would always be a need for travel agents when traveling, but along came Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and others. Not to mentions that people miraculously figured our how to pump there own gas, book their own hotels, make their own stock trades, even reserve their own golf tee times. Do you really think they won’t figure out that they can book their own carpet cleaning. A recent article I read suggested that in the year 2020 about 30% of ALL doctors appointments will be made online with no need for human relations. Why? It cheaper and easier for everyone to do.
Do you think that the doctor booking tools will be in real-time? Ah, I think so!
The intent of this blog is not to scare you away from your present off-line marketing methods, but more to make you aware of what is inevitably coming and sooner than you think. Why do I know this to be a fact? Because FittleBug’s first client proves it. Let’s call him Bill. Bill has had FittleBug for about 4 years now and looking backwards over that 4 year period I can tell you that 50% of ALL of Bill’s carpet cleaning jobs were generated online and the other 50% were called in. It took just FOUR short years to reach 50% online bookings. I can also tell you that he booked about 1.5 bookings per day, and that includes Saturdays and Sundays.
Not having on on-line option for those that chose this method is like handing business over to your competitors. Today all consumers have to do is a Google search to find you and your competition in the same aggregating results. The only question is… are you going to let them finish the task of booking carpet cleaning when they started the search or take the chance that they really do like telephone and email tag?
Do you know any Travel Agents today?
FittleBug Real-Time Scheduling! It’s time in NOW!
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