Web 2.0 in the travel industry

Last years I really didn't understand the added value of travel agencies. You can get more and also useful information via the internet so why did I had to go to the travel agencies and pay for their services. The future of travels agencies is at stake. More and more customers use the internet to book there holidays. And now with web 2.0 it seems that the days of the physical agencies are counted. Read also more about this on USAToday. Web 2.0 put the traveller in the centre of the experience. It is all about the sharing off experiences, ideas and photo without the advertising of the agencies. One example of this is Sheraton with 'Welcome to the neighbourhood'. Here you can see the traveller and his experiences first. Some other initiative are: Airline meals: The one and only website purely about maels in airplanes. See photo and customerreviews. Gusto: A community with many tips, tricks and reviews from customers. Triporama: Mix your holidays together with others. RealTravel: learn from the experiences from others who have already been there. Triptie: See and hear the experiences from other travellers and mix your own journeys. Triphub: make your own page, invite others and share and discuss your plans. The future of the travel industry is online. We will see more and more Web 2.0 applications in the online travel industry where the customers will plan and arrange their own journeys and share there photo's and ideas. What is the added value of a travel agency in this? One recent survey showed that the Dutch are massively online and already in January the number of online reservations was six times as high as the year 2006.