New Skift Monthly Series: Voices From the Front Lines of Travel
Photo Caption: The new Skift Series on the travel industry people you don't hear from often.
Skift Take
If hospitality is what travel businesses are built on, how hospitable do the front line employees feel about their work? In this new series we reveal just that.
The average consumer doesn't understand the difference between booking direct or booking through a tour operator. I'm here in New Orleans now with some friends. A friend of a friend is also here. They were starting to book something through Viator and it was like, "Well, should I call them to ask? Should I call the tour company to ask?" "No, no. The transaction went through Viator, so you need to talk to them." It does create a little bit of confusion.
Below we let this person relate his or her experience with changing technology, consumer habits, and other brand challenges in a very candid manner. These are first-person quotes edited for clarity, but otherwise verbatim. Consumer Confusion Skift: One challenge of this space is that there are multiple ways for consumers to acquire tickets, from buying them off the street to downloading a PDF from an online third-party seller to getting them as part of a package. For me, trying to be very customer-service oriented, it always feels like a cop-out saying, "Oh, no. I'm sorry you have to contact this other company, because you booked through them." They don't fully understand the difference be