Travel Agency Sector in the United Kingdom Essay

get Agency Sector in the United Kingdom - Essay ExampleThe barriers to market entry in the travel agency sector are low, therefore, increasing the intensity of the competition. Most travel agents are unsteady their marketing to online bookings in order to remain competitive. In 2013, the penetration of in-store bookings fell from 25 percent to 18 percent from the previous year (www.store.mintel.com). The agencies are facing numerous challenges due to an increase in spry internet penetration.The two leading travel agencies in the UK are TUI Travel plc and Thomas Cook mathematical group plc. Thomas Cook travel agency is one of the leading UK-based travel agencies, and it is overly listed on the capital of the United Kingdom Stock Exchange. The agency owns a number of tour operators and charter airlines in the United Kingdom. The agency also extends its presence to Belgium and the Scandinavian countries. It is also the owner of Condor (scheduled airline) and Hotels4u (booking websi te). Currently, Thomas Cook has a customer base of 19.1 one million million million and 32,722 employees making it the second largest travel agency in Europe and the UK. Thomas Cook ranks second after TUI UK Limited, which has 4,644,025 passengers licensed (CAA 2015).This Group attributes its growth to the introduction of new products and its winter sun initiatives (Thomas Cook 2015, p. 1). Table 1 shows the overall performance of Thomas Cook for the two-year period.TUI Travel plc is the leading travel services supplier in the United Kingdom. The Group offers noble-quality travel services to its 30 million customers in 31 study source markets. These services include flight bookings and the entire holiday services (TUI Travel plc 2014).Despite the high competition in the travel industry, TUI Travel plc recorded an underlying operating growth profit of 11 percent at constant current rates (TUI Travel plc 2014, p. 1).