WASHINGTON, DC --  According to a recent Travel Poll by the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA), 26 percent of Americans say they have used a travel agent to book at least one business, pleasure, or personal trip, flight, hotel room, rental car, or tour in the past three years. This translates to more than 54 million American travelers. With more and more Americans using the Internet to book travel, it is not surprising that this figure is down from 32 percent in October 1999.

TIA’s representative telephone survey of 1,300 U.S. adults found that half (50%) of Americans using a travel agent for booking purposes in the past three years are frequent travelers, having taken five or more trips in the past year. More than half (55%) of those booking through travel agents are men; 45 percent are women.
 

Four in ten (43%) travel agent users are Baby Boomer travelers, age 35 to 54 and one-third (33%) are Generation X and Y travelers, age 18 to 34. A majority (60%) of those booking through travel agents are married and nearly four in ten (38%) have a college degree or more.

Travelers booking through travel agents are different from all U.S. past-year travelers in a few ways. This group is more likely than overall past-year travelers to be male (55% vs. 49%), have some post-graduate education (16% vs. 11%), and have an annual household income of $50,000 or more (52% vs. 41%).