Revolution of information communication technology and its affects to travel agency: are the travel agencies in Malaysia ready? / Nur Aina Mohd Asri, Jamilah Mat Daud and Alif Sabri

The Internet has had a major impact on tourism and travel, with the development of huge numbers of websites and applications including reservation systems, online travel agents and tour operators, and interactive product review sites. Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the sector has represented both an important challenge and an opportunity for tourism companies.
The profound impact of the Internet and information and communication technologies (ICT) has brought about several changes on tourism both for providers and consumers especially in the area of online sales of travel and tourism products and services. This has challenged the traditional role of travel agencies as they seek urgent ways to re-invent their roles or face the threat of being disintermediated. With the internet now available it meant that Travel Agents, Tour operators could all have their own websites for the customer to view, they could also put their site on the search engines to bring in more business. Everyone can sit at home (providing they have a computer and internet access) and browse the search engines, or type in a site they know to try and find the holiday of their choice (Poon, 2001).

Although the internet creates an opportunity for the travel agencies to promote their service and packages online, it has also given an opportunity for the tourism suppliers to offer their services direct to potential customers. Thus, gives people more options to research on a particular destination, or read reviews about a places, sites, and attractions. Internet has taken a lot of the business away from the travel agencies forcing a few to close down (Law & Wong, 2003).