INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 9, ISSUE 03, MARCH 2020 ISSN 2277-8616 5632 IJSTR©2020 www.ijstr.org The Preferences of Potential Tourists in Utilizing Travel Agencies and Travel Application Dalilah, Md Salleh²; Albattat, Ahmad¹٭; Nur Hafify Shazwani², Rosli; Theana, Nesamani²; Wan Hamisah, Wan Hassan² Abstract— Tourism as an industry has been constantly growing with the pace of technological advancements. The breakthroughs of technology via e-commerce and high-speed Internet have allowed today’s generation to deal with online booking system. Due to that, many researchers eager to identify the impact of online system towards the growth and survival of traditional travel agencies. The expansion of the Internet has led many traditional businesses to struggle while competing with online-based companies. Hence, this research project aims its focus in studying the preferences between travel agency business model and online travel booking applications used by tourists and consumers in determining their decision making when purchasing for trips and accommodation. The data analysis was recorded using a quantitative method by distributing 200 questionnaires to tourists who come to visit the city of Kuala Lumpur. Index Terms— Preferences, Tourist, Travel Agency, Travel Applications ——————————  —————————— 1 INTRODUCTION HE emergence of travel agencies began over 100 years ago in United Kingdom, was pioneered by the oldest agent known as tour operator of Cox and Kings (British company) back in the 19th century. This company is stated as the oldest due to the reliance upon services to its wealthy clients, supplied by a bank that was established since 1758. The existence of air transport after the Second World War has increased their product scope from the limited focus on shipping and railing services (Westcott, 2015). However, Thomas Cook was known as the most popular travel agent that breakthrough to many today‘s independent agent in the present time. It also known as the ―Pioneer of Travel Agency‖ that focused on selling accommodation, rail, sea, land-based services in tourism industry, and obtained commission for every sale provided (Vikas, 2016). This was a huge development and milestone for Cook, who was also the first man to establish a holiday tour package. From the 19th century, Thomas Cook agencies have become popular and gradually encouraged the massive pop-up of other agencies across the globe (Do, Tham, Khatibi & Azam, 2019). According to Tarofder, Azam and Ali (2018), travel agency is signified as a private retailer to leisure and business travelers that provides tourism related services to the public on behalf of travel providers, which including airlines, hotels, car-hires, cruise lines, foreign currency and tour packages. This agency is paid with a commission by the supplier of the service in holiday packages known as tour operators. They act as an intermediary, beneficially linking customers with the tourism provider of travel products and services (Elliot & Joppe, 2016). As for the travel agent, it is best defined as an individual who undertakes a work for another individual, who becomes the ‗principal‘. The principal in such an affiliation not only sets the aims of the work, such as selling tickets, but they can also control and custom the way the work is completed (Popp, Simmons & McEvoy, 2017). 1.1 Technology in the Tourism Industry Technological development from horse-drawn carriages to the new Airbus A380 has led to a remarkable increase in both capacity and speed of tourist travel. However, the continuation of this development has given an endogenous systemic cause that lead to the increase of carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption (Peeters, 2010). Another stream of technological research and development aim at reducing pollution and emissions per passenger-kilometer, but they suffer from several rebound effects. The final impact on energy consumption depends heavily on the strength of positive and negative feedback in tourism transport and its technological system. However, since the core tourism industry such as tour operators, travel agencies, and accommodation are having a strong link with air transport, it is unlikely for technological development to have no strong social and political control, as these two capable to help the industry to reach emissions reduction and avoid dangerous climate change (Peeters, 2010). Technological progress and tourism have been going hand in hand for years (Navío-Marco, Ruiz-Gómez & Sevilla- Sevilla, 2018). The transformation of tourism business practices, strategies and industrial structures have been in tremendous global impact upon the developments of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) since 1980s (Porter, 2001). In addition, the establishment of the Computer Reservations Systems (CRSs) in the 1970s, the Global Distribution Systems (GDSs) in the late 1980s and the development of the Internet in the late 1990s have transformed to the best operational and strategic practices in the industry (Bekteshi & Bekteshi, 2017). ICTs enable travelers to access for reliable and accurate information, by experiencing the opportunity to undertake reservations in a fraction of time, cost and inconvenience required by conventional methods. In present time, many customers tend to make reservations directly from hotel websites (Bandara & Silva, 2016), GUIDE system (Ellis, Thomas, Knudson, Hassell & Easterbrook, 2015), and other PDA based systems (Halmann & Amemiya, 2018). Initially, it has become as a lifestyle for customers to independently search for information related to travel, make T