For example, it would be impractical for a cruise line to have a sales office in every market city of 5,000 or more people. The most efficient method is to market through more than 15,000 retail travel agencies in the United States and pay them a commission for every cruise sold. The cruises could also be sold through such intermediaries as tour wholesalers (who would include a cruise in a package vacation), through corporate travel
offices, via the Internet, or by an association such as an automobile club. Thus, the cruise line uses a combination of distribution channel organizations to sell cruises. Figure 7.1 extracts the operating
sectors from Figure 1.2 and shows that travel trade is one of the important sectors of the tourism
industry.