By kewlsurf2...
Best Answer
Yes--it has been devestated. Other Answer
The travel industry is hurting - but not just because of online travel. Further it is not hurting, it decided to commit suicide. First came discounts, then more discounts. Then came the end of regulation, so "discounts" and "cheap" became "suicidal" - and the public lost their protection to boot. Then came the internet and all these factors together put the whole industry back 30 years. Airlines decided to scrap payments to travel agents, yet are trying to keep the agents working for them - basically because they have reduced their own reservation and ground staff training to such pisspoor levels that travel agents are some of the few people who have a holistic understanding of travel. Bright, dynamic executives got into airlines who have tried "out of the box" and "blue sky" thinking and pulled out the foundations of the travel industry without a thought, beyond next quarters results, about how to replace those fundations. They came up with unsustainable answers to the the wrong questions asked by inappropriate people. There some very clever people in travel, such as Mr O'Leary of RyanAir but people of his high calibre and common sense are few and far between. No, it is not "online" that hurt the travel industry, the travel industry had already proved itself quite capable of beating itself up a long time before that!