cover story
TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE
role that home-based agents play in
distribution, Travel Weekly and its
sister publication, TravelAge West,
asked Stanley Plog to design and
conduct research on this little-un-derstood portion of the sales channel. Plog, an analyst and researcher
of industry trends, developed a multipronged approach: He not only
polled home agents to define their
characteris-
BY DAN LUZADDER AND BILL POLING tics but also
interviewed
suppliers and heads of agency associations to define their value.
This article is the first of a two-part series on the results of the
home-agent study and part of an
ongoing research-based series examining the evolving role of travel
agents in general. This week, we examine home-agent revenue, com-
mon practices, relationships with
hosts, client bases, support from
suppliers and other aspects of the
home-based channel.
Next week’s segment will focus
on suppliers: how their relationships with home-based agents have
developed, with which products
home agents’ sales are valued most,
what commission is paid on various
products, supplier views about professionalism of home-based agents
and how suppliers are marketing
their products to and through this
distribution channel.
Plog’s findings are drawn from
responses from 1,062 participants,
giving the survey a margin of error on most questions of plus or
minus 3 to 4 percentage points.
Results were also analyzed in various subgroups to create a picture of
the home-based agent community,
a group that is growing, the survey
concludes, in both size and importance.
T
HOME ALONE
A NEW STUDY REVEALS DETAILS ABOUT HOME-BASED AGENTS, A GROWING
SUBSET OF TRAVEL RETAIL THAT DRAWS A MIX OF OLD PROS, NEWBIES,
WANNABES AND DILETTANTES ILLUSTRATIONS BY JC SUARES
Travel Weekly’s research on home-based agents drew on responses from 1,062 participants, giving the
survey a margin of error on most questions of plus or minus 3 to 4 percentage points.
