Paulette Potter, a travel consultant in O’Fallon, Mo., helps a client plan a vacation to Mexico or the Dominican Republic.

MCT / Huy Richard Mach

ST. LOUIS — Jenny Nord and Tom Steinberg took different avenues in planning their perfect vacations. She consulted a travel agent. He did it himself online.

Although more than two-thirds of leisure travelers use the Internet these days to book the flights, hotels and cars they need on their vacations, traditional travel agents are fighting back by emphasizing their personal touch and hands-on expertise that no computer can match.

Nord, a social worker from Florissant, Mo., was headed to Disneyworld in Orlando with her 4-year-old son, Davin, and initially went online to look at packages and prices.

“I’m not a big Internet person, and I found it pretty confusing,” she said. “There were too many choices.”

Nord, 29, sought advice from Jan Stanczak, a travel agent at a Missouri Carlson Wagonlit Travel office, who arranged her trip.

“Jan was very familiar with all the Disney packages,” Nord said. “She said September was the best time. Prices were a little bit better, there were fewer crowds and the weather was beautiful. We’re staying at the Caribbean Beach Resort on site. Jan said shuttles take us where we need to go on the property. It was just so simple.”

Steinberg, 55, a physician in St. Louis, was going to Europe with a friend for a nine-night trip that started in Amsterdam and ended in Paris. He used Travelocity.com to book the flights, Booking.com to find hotels and Michelin.com to get maps.

Steinberg, who described himself as “moderately computer savvy,” praised the hotel reviews he found on Booking.com.

“The reviews were precisely what I found when I got there,” he said. “I could communicate with the hotels online, I made the reservations and asked the one in Paris a question. I could get all the information I wanted over the Internet.”

The travel agent industry has survived a triple whammy of events in the last decade or so. First was the boom in online booking sites. Second was the elimination of airline commissions to travel agents. Third was 9/11, when travel slowed and many agencies shut their doors. The industry reported 32,238 agencies in 1999, and 20,492 this year.

Michael Cannizzaro, director of research at PhoCusWright, a travel research firm, said roughly half of all leisure travel in 2001 was booked by travel agents. This year, that figure is expected to be about 25 percent.

“The offline channels are all shrinking,” he said. “So while traditional travel agencies are in some cases doing well, overall they are continuing to shrink in the consumer area.”

Roger Block, executive vice president of Carlson Wagonlit, says the agents that remained in business are staging a comeback largely because of the dissatisfaction of customers with the impersonal nature of online booking. Those agents, Block said, “are there for their customers from the beginning of the travel process right through the end, ready to assist. No computer can do that.”

Dave Kronk, an agent with Damar Travel in Maryland Heights, Mo., used his sister-in-law as an example.

“If it’s something simple, like getting a flight to Scottsdale for the weekend, she’ll use Orbitz.com,” Kronk said. “But when she’s ready to book a cruise, or putting together a package, she’ll come to me.”

Kronk pointed out that if a customer merely wants to book a flight, a travel agent usually charges a standard fee of $30. But if that customer is arranging a tour or package, the agent’s pay comes from the cruise line or tour company in the form of a commission.

Stanczak, the agent who helped the Nords go to Disneyworld, said there were advantages to using an agent even when booking a weekend trip.

“It is simple to book a round-trip flight with a hotel online,” she said. “But flights change, plans change. People find themselves in bad predicaments and they need help. In times of problems or crisis, do you really want to get on the Internet and try to find someone? You call a number and push 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, and it just goes on and on forever.”

With more online travel sites showing up each week, travel industry experts said there were hundreds available, with many travel agencies also offering online booking.

“We haven’t done an inventory, but Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia, Priceline.com, Hotwire and Hotels.com are the ‘big six,’ ” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Forrester Research. “Prices online are generally, but not always, better — though the savings a consumer may get from booking online may be as little as $5 or $10.”

Travel agencies are keeping in business, he said, by evolving from selling packages to providing expertise — Carlson Wagonlit, for example, has a new program in which its agents are tested before they can be designated a “destination specialist” on certain locations. Some agencies are charging a flat fee from clients seeking advice from specialists, especially about high-end travel to exotic places.

“Agencies’ values have shifted from transaction to research,” Harteveldt said. “As such, they are more like media companies, and must therefore do a better job of making their money from people who use them to research trips. That will mean a big change in how they do business.”

Cannizzaro, the research director for PhoCusWright, said the traditional agents who will succeed are those who focus on “longer-haul traveling.”

“The driver is, people are going to the Web and trying to book more complicated travel, and they can’t do that very well,” he said. “Five destinations in a week is very difficult, and travel agencies can do that in a snap. It’s a big world and there are a lot of destinations, and many of those have not been very heavily traveled. Expedia is not going to have a lot of information on certain exotic locales.”

Brooke Ferencsik of TripAdvisor.com, the largest travel network in the world, said the site got more than 25 million monthly visitors, many of them contributing reviews and opinions. The information is free for others doing research on a trip.

“We get real advice from real travelers, the levels of details are amazing,” Ferencsik said. “We offer the collective wisdom of millions of travelers who are looking to share their opinions so other travelers can benefit from their experience. It’s not just the good elements. We offer the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Ferencsik suggested that travelers at ease with the Internet could plan a trip using information collected online. If they then wanted personalized service in booking the trip, they could turn to a travel agent.

“Some travel agents actually do their research on TripAdvisor,” he said.

Steinberg, the computer-savvy doctor, agreed there might be times when he, too, would turn to a travel agent.

“If I was going somewhere fairly exotic, where the information would be more difficult to come by over the Internet, I would rely on a travel agent,” he said.