Internet versus travel agencies

Abstract

Internet and User-Generated Content has reshaped the way people plan for, buy and consume tourist products, thus putting into question the very role of traditional travel agencies. Using a sample of 1448 Italian tourists, this research finds that significant differences do exist between occasional, moderate and frequent online buyers, based on gender, age, education level and income, their online purchase experience, and their likelihood to be influenced by User-Generated Content in their final choices. Results also highlight that the Internet is used most frequently when people make hotel reservations for both short-haul and short-term leisure travels. From a theoretical perspective, this research provides further insight into the scientific debate on disintermediation for booking hotel rooms, showing that differences based on cultural background do exist and should be investigated via cross-cultural comparison, also considering the relative power in influencing the tourist’s choices that User-Generated Content has with respect to information delivered by travel agencies. Further, managerial implications, limitations and future directions are also discussed.

Keywords

Disintermediation Italy online buyers sociodemographic characteristics User-Generated Content

Introduction

During the last decade, the Internet has reshaped the way people plan for, buy and consume tourist products and services (Buhalis and Law, 2008), dramatically changing the role of tourism intermediaries (Kracht and Wang, 2009). More recently, the most significant development in Internet applications has been in the area of User-Generated Content (UGC) and peer-to-peer applications, the so-called Web 2.0 (Musser and O’Reilly, 2006), with UGC and Travel 2.0 applications being one of the most important sources of information for consumers making a purchasing decision (Gretzel and Yoo, 2008). Acccording to Xiang (2011), social media websites represent a considerable proportion of the online tourism domain within the context of planning trips using a search engine, even though there are considerable variations in the amount of social media displayed by Google (Xiang, 2011). For example, according to eMarketer (2007a), almost half of European Internet users made decisions about their travel plans using Travel 2.0 applications. Recently, PhoCusWright (2011) reported that more than four in 10 travellers say that UGC within their social networks is influential in their travel decision-making.

That said, it could be argued that the Internet has increased the productivity and efficiency of hotels’ marketing efforts, allowing hospitality companies to reach their customers directly in order to offer them promotions and sales (Law and Lau, 2005; Tse, 2003), thus rendering the role of traditional travel agencies questionable.

In 2009, the value of the total European travel market was €215b. In the same year, the value of online leisure and unmanaged business travel bookings was €66.4b, representing a market share of 31% (PhoCusWright, 2010). In the same year, the total gross value of bookings for European hotels was €75.1b. Of this, €14.3b came from bookings made online, representing an online penetration of 19% (PhoCusWright, 2010). According to ISTAT (the Italian national statistical office), in 2010, most Italian households (52.4%) had access to the Internet. In 2009, Italy’s share of the European travel market was about 7.7%, while its online travel market share was only 4.6% (PhoCusWright, 2010). Again, in 2009, Italian gross hotel bookings reached €9.8b, 4.5% of which was generated through direct online bookings (PhoCusWright, 2010).

Based upon the above data, the size of the Italian online travel market appears to be smaller than that of the other large countries. One reason for this is that in Italy, the operations of traditional agencies are still strong and are able to control most of the distribution of potential business. According to ISNART (2010), in the first semester of 2009, 18.3% of Italian tourists used travel agencies. However, even in Italy, the role of traditional travel agencies will change because of an increase in the Italian online travel market that is expected over the next few years (PhoCusWright, 2010).

Until now, there has been very little research examining the perceptions of different groups of online buyers of hotel rooms with different online purchasing experiences. Further, until now, no published article exists that aimed at examining whether occasional, moderate and frequent buyers are more or less likely to change the accommodation suggested by a travel agency based upon UGC. The aim of this study is to contribute towards filling this gap by conducting an empirical research in Italy. Italy was chosen as the research site for this study for two reasons. On the one hand, in Italy, the debate on disintermediation and reintermediation is still open, researchers are discussing the future of traditional intermediaries (Gentile, 2002), but no published article has yet investigated the views of Italian online buyers either for or against the disintermediation of hotel reservations. Further, since prior research (Law, 2009) focused on a specific geographical area, this study provides further insights into the scientific debate on disintermediation for booking hotel rooms, showing whether differences based on cultural background do exist and should be investigated via cross-cultural comparison, also considering the relative power in influencing the tourist’s choices that UGC has with respect to information delivered by travel agencies. On the other hand, adopting a marketing perspective, the findings might offer practical recommendations for both hotel marketers and travel agencies interested in targeting the Italian tourism demand.

Literature review

In the tourism distribution channels, most relevant changes have been reported since Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the Internet (Buhalis and Law, 2008) and UGC (Gretzel and Yoo, 2008) started to pervade the industry and the market. The online interpersonal influence, referred to as electronic word of mouth (eWOM) (Litvin et al., 2008), exterts a great influence in stimulating travel, both in the real planning process and even after the travel decision has been made (Gretzel and Yoo, 2008). eWOM is particularly important for the tourism sector because tourism and hospitality products and services are, on the one hand, difficult to evaluate as they are intangible goods (Lewis and Chambers, 2000) and, on the other hand, high-involvement products where behaviour patterns during purchase are not routine and the purchase of these products requires a significant amount of time, thought and energy as well as other resources (Swarbrooke and Horner, 2007). UGC sources are considered more credible and trustworthy than market-provided information and, consequently, more likely to direct and influence tourist choices (Akehurst, 2009; Chung and Buhalis, 2008; Gretzel and Yoo, 2008; Weiss et al., 2008). Sometimes UGC also induces tourists to alter their decisions after obtaining further information online. Indeed, eMarketer (2007b), for example, reports that, among tourists who use peer reviews to help them make their hotel bookings, the percentage of travellers who changed their booking based on reviews posted online by other consumers are 25% and 33%, respectively, for infrequent and frequent leisure travellers. An empirical investigation on a sample of 823 Italian tourist (Del Chiappa, 2011) confirmed this figure, with respondents reporting that after having read reviews and comments posted online, they changed their hotel accommodation sometimes (64.8%), almost always (12%) or always (0.5%). However, the influence of UGC on tourist choices varies with the type of travel. For example, recommendations of friends and colleagues are less important to business travellers than they are to leisure travellers (McCarthy et al., 2010).

The development of Internet and other ICT applications transformed the structure of the value chain, altered the power position of incumbents and developed a whole range of opportunities and threats for all stakeholders involved in the tourism sector (Berne et al., 2012; Buhalis and Law, 2008). Prior to the development of the Internet and ICT, suppliers had no choice but to use traditional tourism intermediaries, such as offline travel agencies and tour operators. The Internet is now considered to be a major distribution channel for hotel rooms, and hotels use it to communicate directly to consumers on web-only rates, passing on discounts that are generated from saved commissions and lower distribution costs that a shorter value chain allows to exploit (Buhalis and Law, 2008). That said, to the degree that the Internet allows consumers to make their hotel reservations online, including developing and purchasing their own self-made itineraries, the future of travel agents has become questionable.

The disintermediation hypothesis, that is, the idea that the role of the middleman will be eliminated (Buhalis, 1998), has captured the attention of both researchers and practitioners. In particular, prominent arguments exist in literature for and against disintermediation of the tourism distribution channel (Buhalis, 1998; Law, 2009). For example, among the arguments in favour of disintermediation, Buhalis (1998) cited the great flexibility and variety of consumer choice made possible by the Internet, the poor level of training and competence of travel agency personnel, and the fact that travel agencies are biased towards suppliers who offer overriding commissions. On the other hand, among the arguments against disintermediation, we can consider, for example, the time savings that travel agencies grant their customers, the human touch they provide and the reduction in uncertainty and insecurity they ensure by assuming the responsibility for all arrangements (Buhalis, 1998). The disintermediation debate has focused on both the revenue-generating aspects of tourism distribution and the search-for-information stage in consumers’ decision-making (Grønflaten, 2011).

Broadly, the Internet and ICT produce benefits for both tourism suppliers and consumers. On the one hand, they allow suppliers to reduce their distribution costs and to gain higher revenues and a larger marketplace (Law et al., 2004). On the other hand, the Internet and ICT allow tourists to save time and costs when searching for information, to stimulate and expand eWOM, to buy tailor-made products, and to access a wider selection of travel service providers anytime and anywhere (Anckar, 2003; Buhalis and Licata, 2002). However, the Internet can also produce some negative effects on both the tourism industry and the tourists. The Internet can influence tourism companies negatively because it creates online price transparency, it increases price competition and it reduces customer loyalty (Wen, 2009). However, consumers are often required to face the sort of information overload that the large amount of information available online can create, and to spend a lot of time evaluating options and making choices without the support of a professional travel agent (Anckar, 2003).

Tourists can use the Internet to make their hotel bookings in various ways and can be divided into those who only wish to acquire information (lookers) and those who also use it to buy tourism services and products (bookers). For example, Toh et al. (2011), in their study, reported 78% of respondents using the Internet for information search, of which 67% making bookings online and a very small number using travel agencies. As highlighted by Morrison et al. (2001), lookers differ from bookers in several sociodemographic characteristics and in their Internet usage (number of years they have been using the Internet, number of hours they surf the Internet per week, etc.). For example, it was shown that the propensity to purchase online increases with age, education level and income (Bonn et al., 1998; Law and Wong, 2003; Law et al., 2004; Weber and Rohel, 1999). Grønflaten (2011) found younger groups being less likely than senior groups to prefer travel agents when searching for information and people older than 59 years and on an organized tour being likely to choose the combination of travel agents and face to face. In other studies, younger people make significantly fewer online hotel bookings than their older counterparts (Law, 2009). Graeupl and McCabe (2003) found the ‘grey market’ using the Internet mainly for information search being, however, more suspicious than others of the information available online (Graeupl, 2006). Prior research also showed that consumers’ information search differ by travel product characteristics (Beldona et al., 2005; Card et al., 2003). So, for example, for high-risk products, consumers use the Internet to collect and exchange information but they do not use it to purchase online (Jun et al., 2010). Prior studies showed that people usually buy convenience and standard goods online, while they rely heavily on traditional intermediaries when buying complex products (Candela and Figini, 2010; Werthner and Klein, 1999). Similarly, it was highlighted that tourists are more willing to buy low-involvement products through the Internet than high-involvement products (Chu, 2001). Finally, prior research found that short-haul travellers perceive traditional travel agents as biased operators (because they are commission-oriented) and less flexible or able to offer a good variety of choices (Law et al., 2004). So, despite the rise in the number of Internet sites that allow tourists to make hotel reservations directly, travel agencies seem able to continue playing an important role in the marketing mix of a significant majority of hotels (Ku et al., 2010), at least to reach customers belonging to specific segments and who are looking for complex, high-involvement products. For example, business travellers still use traditional travel agencies when making hotel reservations (Grønflaten, 2011; Kim and Kim, 2004). Law (2009) also demonstrated the existence of significantly different views among occasional, moderate and frequent online buyers of hotel rooms for and against the arguments of disintermediation. Specifically, he showed that frequent buyers express a more positive view towards technology-assisted hotel reservations than moderate and occasional buyers. Further, according to Law (2009), occasional, moderate and frequent buyers show significant differences in age but not in gender, education level and household income.

To sum up, there is a substantial strand of literature covering the topic of disintermediation, and while previous research has helped to identify many of the factors influencing consumers’ view in favour or against it, very few studies have focused on the perceptions of different groups of online buyers of hotel rooms with different online purchasing experiences. Furthermore, until now, there has been no published article aimed at examining the relative power of UGC in influencing tourists’ choices compared to information delivered by travel agencies. This study was therefore carried out to investigate this somewhat neglected area of tourism research by carrying out an empirical investigation on a sample of 1448 Italian tourists.

Methodology

The present study was carried out to investigate the views of Italian online buyers in favour or against the disintermediation of hotel reservations. For this purpose, the study targeted exclusively adults resident in Italy and at least 18 years old.

A structured questionnaire was developed that took into account previous literature evaluating the perception of travellers on disintermediation in travel services. Specifically, we referred to the research carried out by Buhalis (1998) and Law (2009). Two questions were then added to understand to what extent Italian travellers: (a) change the hotel accommodation that had been suggested by a travel agency after having read reviews and comments posted online; and (b) use the Internet to make hotel reservations for different types of travelling. Regarding the latter, journeys were classified according to their geographical scale (national, European and intercontinental), length (short and medium–long) and motivation (leisure, business and honeymoon). The first extra question was added to consider the relevant influence that UGC is currently exerting on tourists’ choices. Specifically, this question was aimed at investigating the comparative power that UGC and business-minded information (e.g. travel agencies) exert in influencing the consumers’ choices. The second extra question was added in order to verify if prior research, differentiating the use of the Internet for hotel bookings by type of travel, can be confirmed also in the context of Italy.

Data were collected through an online questionnaire. A snowball sampling technique was used (Wrenn et al., 2007), which is often used with hidden population segments who are difficult for researchers to access. Through referral mechanisms, this technique provides researchers with an ever-expanding set of potential respondents (Goldenberg et al., 2009) in a very cheap and efficient way. The main disadvantage is that it is based on a non-random sampling approach. However, according to Auerbach and Silverstein (2003), it could be argued that a non-random sample is appropriate when the members of a special population are difficult to locate. That said, in our study, the snowball sample technique was considered the best choice to obtain a large sample of consumers who reside in all regions of Italy and to cope with the financial constraints we faced in managing the research project.

Initial subjects were generated from the 2500 contacts of an Italian Tourism Association based in the centre of Italy. These 2500 individuals, residing in different regions of Italy, received an e-mail inviting them to fill in the online questionnaire by clicking on a link provided in the e-mail. At the same time, they were invited to forward the survey to their friends, relatives and contacts (older than 18 years of age).

The survey used was divided into three parts. A qualifying question about whether respondents had any previous experience of booking hotels rooms online was included at the beginning of the first part. Only people who answered positively were allowed to complete the questionnaire. Respondents were then asked to reply to some general demographic questions (gender, age, status, income and education level).

The second part of the questionnaire asked respondents to express to what extent they agree or disagree with a list of eight statements specifically chosen to investigate online buyers’ views for and against the disintermediation of hotel reservations. A five-point Likert scale was used (1 = completely agree; 5 = completely disagree) to indicate their answers. Finally, the third part asked respondents to state the types of travelling for which they usually make hotel reservations through the Internet. The English items used in the questionnaire were drawn from international literature and were translated into Italian by a professional translator, using back-translation for quality assurance. The questionnaire was then pilot–tested by Italian travellers who were not involved in the research. This was done to verify the validity of its content, the comprehensibility of the questions and the scale used to make the assessments. No concerns were reported in the pilot tests. Allowing for a three-week survey period, a total of 1609 questionnaires were returned, of which 1448 were complete and could be used for statistical analysis. The data were coded and analysed using SPSS (version 17.0) and then descriptive analysis and cross-tabulations were extracted. The χ² test of significance, the independent t test and the post hoc analysis (Bonferroni test) were used, where appropriate, to indicate relationships/dependency between variables and whether significant differences exist between the way occasional buyers, moderate buyers and frequent buyers assess their views for and against the disintermediation of hotel reservations.

Findings and discussion

According to previous research (Law, 2009), in this study, online buyers were grouped into occasional buyers (those who have used the Internet to make bookings one or two times), moderate buyers (three to four times) and frequent buyers (more than four times). Among the 1448 respondents, 1035 were occasional buyers, whereas the number of moderate buyers and frequent buyers were, respectively, 272 and 141. Table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of the participants in the survey.

Table 1.

Demographic profile of respondents and χ ² test.

	Occasional buyers	Percentage	Moderate buyers	Percentage	Frequent buyers	Percentage	Overall (100%)	χ ²
Gender
Male	428	65.6	138	21.2	86	13.2	652	23.919*
Female	607	76.2	134	16.8	55	7	796
Subtotal	1.035	71.5	272	18.8	141	9.7	1.448
Age (years)
18–25	290	84.7	40	11.7	12	3.5	342	56.584*
26–35	494	68.6	153	21.2	73	10.1	720
36–45	176	64.2	54	19.7	44	16.1	274
46–55	52	67.2	16	21	9	11.9	77
56–65	18	64.3	9	32.1	1	3.6	28
66 or older	5	71.4	0	0	2	28.6	7
Subtotal	1.035	71.5	272	18.8	141	9.7	1.448
Education
Below secondary school	38	79.2	9	18.7	1	2.1	48	105.764*
Secondary school	467	80	85	14.6	31	5.4	583
University degree	452	70.5	121	18.9	68	10.6	641
Postgraduate degree (Masters)	56	50	36	32.1	20	17.9	112
PhD	22	35	21	31.7	21	33.3	64
Subtotal	1.035	71.5	272	18.8	141	9.7	1.448
Monthly household income (€)
Less than 1000	71	87.7	9	11.1	1	1.2	81	71.251*
1001–2000	268	77	59	17	21	6	348
2001–3000	188	68.6	55	20	31	11.4	274
3001–4000	82	61.6	37	27.9	14	10.5	133
4001–5000	34	48.6	23	32.8	13	18.6	70
5001–6000	20	48.8	9	22	12	29.2	41
6001–7000	11	78.6	2	14.3	1	7.1	14
7001 or above	86	68.8	27	21.6	12	9.6	125
I prefer not to answer	275	76	51	14.1	36	9.9	362
Subtotal	1.035	71.5	272	18.8	141	9.7	1.448

*Significant at 0.05 level.

The majority of respondents were women in the age group of 26–35 years, with either a university degree or who had completed secondary school, with a monthly household income falling in the €1001 to €2000 or the €2001 to €3000 bands used.

The χ² analysis was carried out to investigate the differences in the respondents’ demographic characteristics between the occasional, moderate and frequent online buyers.

Empirical results indicated that significant differences among the three groups (occasional, moderate and frequent buyers) exist for gender (χ² = 23.919, p < 0.05), age (χ² = 56.584, p < 0.05), income (χ² = 71.251, p < 0.05) and education level (χ² = 105.764, p < 0.05). This means that female, younger, less-educated respondents with a lower income made significantly fewer hotel room bookings online than respondents who are male, older, more educated and with a higher income (Table 1). Contrary to prior research carried out in Hong Kong, that only found significant differences for age (Law, 2009), in our results, significant differences between the three groups were also found for gender, education and monthly household income.

Broadly, our findings confirm the previous studies which found that the propensity to purchase online increases with age, education level and income (Bonn et al., 1998; Law and Wong, 2003; Law et al., 2004; Weber and Rohel, 1999). In particular, the fact that younger respondents make significantly fewer online hotel room bookings than older people can in all probability be attributed to their Internet experience. As Kim and Kim (2004) reveal, Internet purchasing is directly related to age groups, with more experienced users likely to make more online purchases. χ² analysis was also conducted to investigate whether occasional, moderate and frequent buyers are more or less likely to change the accommodation suggested by a travel agency based upon UGC (Table 2). Findings indicate that significant differences do exist. In particular, occasional buyers change their mind more often than moderate or frequent buyers (χ² = 34.023, p < 0.05). This point is quite interesting and should be investigated in the future in order to understand whether the trustworthiness of UGC for online buyers is directly or indirectly related to their own experience in using the Internet.

Table 2.

Have you ever changed the accommodation suggested by a travel agency based upon User-Generated Content?

	Occasional buyers		Moderate buyers		Frequent buyers		Total		χ²
	N	%	N	%	N	%	N	%	χ²
Yes	286	62.58	99	21.66	72	15.76	457	100	34.023*
No	748	75.48	173	17.46	70	7.06	991	100
	1.034		272		142		1.448

*Significant at 0.05 level.

Respondents were also asked about the types of travelling for which they use the Internet to reserve hotel rooms. As shown in Table 3, this happens the most for both short-haul (leisure: 95.6%; business: 61.9%) and medium-haul (European) travelling (leisure: 94.9%; business: 51.1%).

Table 3.

I use the Internet to reserve hotel rooms: an analysis by type of travelling (%) (respondents were allowed to give multiple answers).

	National	European	Intercontinental	Short-term journeys (4 day or less)	Medium–long–term journeys (5 days or more)
Leisure	95.6	94.9	52.8	96	77.5
Business	61.9	51.1	24.4	58.4	39.2
Honeymoon	16.3	18.3	19.2	16.3	19.1

The same happens for short- (leisure: 96%; business: 58.4%) and medium- to long-term leisure journeys (77.5%). Moreover, most people use traditional travel agencies when buying complex products such as a honeymoon. Finally, it is interesting to observe that according to previous research (Cobanoglu, 2001; Kim and Kim, 2004), business travellers use the Internet less frequently than leisure travellers. This occurs for whatever type of travelling is considered. These findings confirm that online buyers are more or less likely to make hotel room reservations through the Internet depending on the type of travel, and therefore confirming prior research that revealed that the Internet is suitable for buying convenience goods and low-involvement products (Chu, 2001), while traditional travel agents are preferred when purchasing complex products (Candela and Figini, 2010; Werthner and Klein, 1999) and by a significant section of business travellers (Cobanoglu, 2001; Kim and Kim, 2004).

Table 4 shows the views of Italian online buyers about whether they are for or against the disintermediation of hotel reservations.

Table 4.

Online buyers’ views for and against the disintermediation of hotel reservations: a comparison.

	All respondents (N = 1.448)		Occasional buyers (N = 1.035)		Moderate buyers (N = 272)		Frequent buyers (N = 141)		F	Post hoc analysis – Boferroni test*
	Mean	Standard	Mean	Standard	Mean	Standard	Mean	Standard	F	Post hoc analysis – Boferroni test*
Technology, particularly the Internet, allows consumers to perform most hotel-searching and room-purchasing functions conveniently	4.47	0.821	4.4	0.858	4.6	0.713	4.7	0.643	12.809*	Frequent buyers > Moderate buyers, Occasional buyers
Websites (electronic intermediaries) are much more flexible and can offer many more choices than travel agents for hotel rooms	3.89	1.028	3.77	1.028	4.18	0.93	4.19	1.045	24.339*	Frequents buyers > Moderate buyers, Occasional buyers
Travel agents are usually in favour of principals who offer more attractive commissions or partners, and thus make biased recommendations for hotels	3.52	1.093	3.48	1.081	3.58	1.085	3.65	1.183	2.114
Travel agents can reduce the insecurity of hotel reservations as they are responsible for all arrangements	3.2	1.146	3.35	1.115	2.89	1.097	2.76	1.236	29.986*	Frequents buyers < Moderate buyers, Occasional buyers
Travel agents are professional counsellors for hotel rooms and offer valuable services and advice	3.14	1.005	3.25	0.987	2.89	0.939	2.76	1.091	25.201*	Frequent buyers < Moderate buyers, Occasional buyers
Travel agents offer a human touch and a human interface with the hotel industry	2.72	1.199	2.88	1.191	2.39	1.035	2.17	1.27	35.877*	Frequent buyers < Moderate buyers, Occasional buyers
Consumers ultimately have to bear the cost of commissions to travel agents for their hotel rooms	2.68	1.001	2.72	0.978	2.54	1.001	2.59	1.135	4.212
It is more convenient to seek advice from travel agents on hotel reservations than from technology	2.16	1.093	2.27	1.083	1.92	1.042	1.88	1.143	16.628*	Frequent buyers < Moderate buyers, Occasional buyers

*significant at 0.05 level.

Surprisingly, regarding this latter point, respondents in general do not agree with the statement that travel agents can provide a better service in terms of human touch (mean = 2.72). Participants also consider that travel agents are business-minded and place their financial incentives higher than the interests and needs of their customers (mean = 3.52). Italian online buyers do not agree with the idea that consumers ultimately have to bear the cost of commissions to travel agents for their hotel rooms (mean = 2.68) and, at the same time, they do not trust the view about the convenience of seeking advice from travel agents and prefer the Internet (mean = 2.16). Moreover, online buyers realized that websites are a more flexible channel to search for information and make reservations (mean = 3.89), allowing consumers to perform most functions of hotel searching and room purchasing more conveniently (mean = 4.47). However, respondents slightly agree that travel agents can provide a better service in terms of risk reduction (mean = 3.2) and professional counselling (mean = 3.14). To sum up, respondents have a quite clearly defined feeling in favour of disintermediation. According to the findings shown in Table 3, this is particularly true for certain types of products and travelling.

Moreover, Table 5 shows that no significant gender differences in the online buyers’ views for or against disintermediation exist.

Table 5.

Online buyers’ views for and against the disintermediation of hotel reservations: gender differences (independent sample t test).

	Male		Female		t test	Significance (two-tailed test)
	Mean	Standard	Mean	Standard	t test	Significance (two-tailed test)
Technology, particularly the Internet, allows consumers to perform most hotel-searching and room-purchasing functions conveniently	4.5	0.826	4.44	0.816	1.455	0.146
Websites (electronics intermediaries) are much more flexible and can offer many more choices than travel agents for hotel rooms	3.93	1.05	3.85	1.009	1.493	0.136
Travel agents are usually in favour of principals who offer more attractive commissions or partners, and thus make biased recommendations for hotels	3.56	1.089	3.48	1.094	1.48	0.139
Travel agents can reduce the insecurity of hotel reservations as they are responsible for all arrangements	3.15	1.149	3.24	1.144	1.481	0.139
Travel agents are professional counsellors for hotel rooms and offer valuable services and advice	3.14	1.032	3.13	0.983	0.14	0.888
Travel agents offer a human touch and a human interface with the hotel industry	2.75	1.244	2.69	1.161	0.947	0.344
Consumers ultimately have to bear the cost of commissions to travel agents for their hotel rooms	2.7	1.028	2.66	0.978	0.762	0.446
It is more convenient to seek advice from travel agents on hotel reservations than from technology	2.2	1.081	2.13	1.101	1.154	0.249

Table 4, however, shows that significant differences were found in all but two questions between the views expressed by occasional, moderate and frequent online buyers for and against disintermediation. Compared with both the occasional and the moderate buyers, frequent buyers display a more positive view about the flexibility of websites and the possibility they offer consumers to perform most hotel-searching and room-purchasing functions at their convenience. On the contrary, frequent buyers express a less positive view about the service provided by the travel agents than either the moderate or the occasional buyers in four of the questions. These questions are related to risk reduction, providing a service with a human touch, professional advice and the convenience of seeking advice from traditional travel agents. To sum up, our findings report frequent buyers as being more positive towards Internet-based hotel reservations than moderate or occasional buyers, thus confirming prior research investigating the different perception of online buyers for and against the topic of disintermediation (Law, 2009).

Conclusion and managerial implications

The major contribution of this study is the demonstration that significant differences do exist between occasional, moderate and frequent Italian online buyers, based on gender, age, education level and income (whereas, prior research carried out in other countries found differences based just on age), their online purchase experience, and their likelihood to be influenced by UGC in their final choices. In particular, frequent buyers are more positive towards Internet-based hotel reservations than moderate or occasional buyers.

These conclusions are significant for both researchers and hospitality managers. On the one hand, they provide further insight into the scientific debate on disintermediation for booking hotel rooms, revealing that differences based on consumers’ cultural background do exist and should be further investigated via cross-cultural comparison. They also reveal that occasional, moderate and frequent buyers are not equally likely to change the accommodation suggested by a travel agency based upon UGC. Specifically, occasional buyers change their mind more often than moderate or frequent buyers.

On the other hand, these findings offer suggestions to both hotel marketers and traditional travel agencies. Considering that the Italian online travel market is expected to grow over the next few years (PhoCusWright, 2010), it could be argued that more people will start using the Internet to make purchases, moving from lookers to occasional and moderate bookers, and then, maybe, to frequent buyers. That said, our findings seems to suggest that the lodging industry should design their websites to be more attractive for Italian middle-aged and richer people who travel often and are heavy users of the Internet as a tool for both searching for and booking hotels. Further, hotel marketers not only should focus on direct sales, but they would also need to monitor their brand reputation as projected in reviews and comments that consumers upload online. Findings also suggest that travel agents should create and maintain a presence in the electronic market place in order to survive and recover their competitiveness (Anckar, 2003). At the same time, they should move away from being booking offices and become travel managers, advisers and consultants. To achieve this, travel agents should add value to the travelling experience that tourists can have (Buhalis, 1998) and should improve their customer service and ability to carve out niche markets and offer specialized products (Tsai et al., 2005). As suggested by Wu and Chang (2006), this also means that Italian travel agencies could convert their business from a dependence on commission fees as their major revenue source to a service charge collection, thus retaining a secure and competitive position in the distribution chain (Bennet, 1993). This is also what hotel practitioners often think when they argue that travel agencies will remain important in the travel and tourism industry, at least for certain target segments and specific types of products (Law and Lau, 2005). Traditional travel agencies should also focus on increasing the attitude of targeted travellers, building and nurturing their reputation (both online and offline), and innovating their products and services.

Although this study helps fill a gap in existing knowledge in the literature and does propose some implications for practitioners, limitations still remain. First, the sample cannot be considered representative of Italian online buyers, even though its size is significant. Second, findings cannot be generalized because of the particular method of sampling we used (i.e. snowball sampling).

In the future, it would be interesting to study how Italian traditional agencies are coping with the developing world of the Internet. In particular, it would be interesting to verify whether and how they currently use the Internet in their marketing strategy. Indeed, only those travel agencies that adopt an e-commerce development model will be able to survive and be competitive (Tsai et al., 2005). According to some pioneering research, in the future, it could also be interesting to consider the problem of disintermediation in Italy, adopting an information search perspective and making a distinction between information sources and information channels. In this way, as Grønflaten (2011) stated, the issue of disintermediation could be analysed both as a choice between two information sources (travel agents versus service providers) and as a choice between two information channels (face to face versus the Internet). Further, the present research could be replicated internationally, thus allowing for cross-cultural comparison, to verify if online buyers in different countries have different views for and against the arguments of disintermediation. Finally, future research is needed to understand whether the trustworthiness of UGC for online buyers is directly or indirectly related to their own experience using the Internet.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The author would like to warmly thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable help and suggestions in enhancing the quality of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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