USA Today, Forrester and Orbitz blasts Obama with the facts - Travel agents: We're doing very well, Mr. President – USATODAY.com

Travel agents: We're doing very well, Mr. President – USATODAY.com

By Charisse Jones, USA TODAY

To hear President Obama tell it, traditional travel agents have died at the hands of the Internet.

His assessment, made earlier this month in Atkinson, Ill., set off a mini-firestorm in the agent industry, which responded to the effect: We're doing very well, Mr. President.

The truth, however, is somewhere in the middle. While thousands of traditional bricks-and-mortar agencies have gone out of business in the last decade because of do-it-yourself Internet booking and a bumpy economy, a significant portion of business trips continue to be arranged or overseen by traditional agents.

And a growing number of leisure travelers are saying they'd prefer to book travel the old-school way, too. A survey by Forrester Research earlier this year found 29% of leisure travelers saying that if they could find a good traditional agent to work with, they would. That's up from 23% in 2008, says Henry Harteveldt, former principal airline and travel analyst at Forrester.

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