FAR FROM SWITCHED ON

It's frustrating at just how far Thailand lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to technology. Take the simple task of booking a hotel room in New York, which is something I have had far too much first hand experience of this week.
You can walk into a travel agent in the UK and get instant confirmation of your booking for a room just about anywhere in the world. There's no "we'll have to speak to the hotel to confirm they've still got rooms'. In Thailand, travel agents seem disconnected from that global technology.
"We cannot give you confirmation because it's night in New York and we have to email them to see if they've still got rooms". Excuse me, but isn't that what the Internet is all about? Any decent hotel will have some method of communicating its available rooms with the outside world, but it seems that Thailand just isn't plugged into the same system.
Before anyone says anything, yes - we can book rooms ourselves using our own credit cards and get instant confirmation, but that's not the point. What are travel agents for?