After weathering several down travel years through the recession, Krings said corporate travel, spec

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So while Web tools for travel have become omnipresent florence hotel lodging reservation – Priceline.com, Orbitz.com, Expedia.com – travel agents still have their place, Gardner said. They provide expertise on booking trips with multiple legs, can talk about a hotel's reputation and make recommendations, and can save an executive valuable time.
A frequent traveler who is familiar with a Web interface can book travel online in as little as four minutes, said Tammy Krings, CEO of the Columbus-based corporate florence hotel lodging reservation travel agency TS24 Inc. For new users, the learning curve makes booking florence hotel lodging reservation take longer, she said.
Online booking tools have become more of an educational tool for corporate travelers, said Kim Davis, owner of Travel Partners in Dublin. About 55 percent of Travel Partners' business stems from business travel.
florence hotel lodging reservation TS24 launched florence hotel lodging reservation a Web-based tool for clients in 2006, and its share of airline tickets booked online has swelled to about 60 percent, Krings said. Its customers, such as Columbus-based American Electric Power Company Inc. and Beaverton, florence hotel lodging reservation Ore.-based Nike Inc., increasingly are using that tool. Nike spends about $60 million a year on U.S. airline tickets florence hotel lodging reservation and is using the portal in 52 countries, she said.
"At the core, the reason why someone would use a travel agency at all is for access to all that inventory and pricing on the market," Krings said. "I think the travel agent role itself has been elevated by the fact that they're dealing with more complex itineraries and markets."
For example, Krings said Web-based tools can return results for airlines that have farmed their reservation systems to dedicated reservation companies such as Expedia.com, and some – like Port Columbus International Airport's largest carrier, Southwest Airlines Co. – are searchable only through their own websites. But a travel agent knows that and can aggregate information, including baggage fees and international tariffs, from multiple sources florence hotel lodging reservation to help find the best price, she said.
Driven by capacity declines and increasing corporate demand, airfare for intercontinental travel in Latin America is expected to increase 4 percent to 7 percent, according to Advito, a research unit of Atlanta-based BCD Travel.
After weathering several down travel years through the recession, Krings said corporate travel, specifically international travel, is improving. International travel is up 33 percent at TS24 as its customers increasingly look to Asia and Mexico as potential growth florence hotel lodging reservation markets, she said.
"It's a critical shift in what we've seen in years past," Krings said. "Much of the travel abroad was for us to buy goods and services overseas but it's certainly starting to pace along that way that the travel abroad is for us to sell our goods and services overseas."
The Ohio Valley Business Travel Association's parent organization, the Global Business Travel Association, has been promoting travel as an investment rather than expense, Gardner said, and total travel revenue hit pre-2008 levels last year for the first time since the recession began.