Workforce Issues: Canada Agency Launches Plan to Retain Newcomers

This is the first of two stories on attracting and retaining newcomers

If the travel agency industry wants to attract and retain new entrants successfully, owners and managers need to make staff training and development a top priority. It’s that simple.

That’s the consensus of many industry members who have done just that.

Among them is James Shearer, COO of Travel Masters. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based agency is making a sizable investment in an education program that it hopes will help it retain and develop new agents successfully.

Agency groups and trade associations have advanced various workforce development efforts through the years, the most recent being Tourism Cares’ and ASTA’s Travel Talent for Tomorrow initiative, but in Shearer’s view strategies for retaining new entrants can only be deployed successfully at the employer level.

Pain point
 “It’s very difficult for the industry as a whole to tackle this, because it is an employer-employee situation. The individual needs that we have as employers and employees are really diverse,” Shearer said.

That’s not necessarily easy, he conceded.

Asked if travel agency employers are doing enough to help new entrants grow and succeed so they’ll stick around, Shearer replied, “That’s the biggest challenge, the biggest pain point. A lot of employers, regardless of the industry, may not have the capacity, the experience or the understanding of what the employee needs.”

Youthful employees
You can spot those employers that have made strides in this area because they have a lot of younger people working for them, Shearer said. And those employers “tend to be the ones that focus on education and growth.”

He cited the fast food chain McDonald’s as one example. In the travel agency industry, he pointed to Flight Centre Canada, which he said has “an enormous percentage of their staff who are under 40.”

“They have that because people can join right out of high school and be educated on what they need to succeed.”

Rolling out a solution
Travel Masters aims to join their ranks.The 60-agent travel retailer is about to roll out a comprehensive education platform for agents who work at its four corporate-owned outlets and for the three franchisees in Travel Masters’ young franchise division.

Shearer said the program, called Runway, aims to go beyond product training to give newcomers a deeper understanding of the industry, including the dynamic between client, agent and product, something he sees lacking in supplier training programs.

“We thought we might build a resource that is a single platform that allows agents to quickly get the information they expect and need and to expand their knowledge in a way that is self-paced.”
 
Reduced drain on resources
The goal is to create a program that lets TravelMasters and its franchisees bring new agents up to speed without being a drain on agency owners and managers.

“If I decide to become a travel agent, someone’s got to teach me all the pieces. It takes a long time and is very broad, widespread and disconnected. This brings all those things together,” Shearer said.

In addition to more traditional agent training topics, such as sales, product knowledge, GDS instructions and training on other systems and applications, Travel Masters’ program will cover areas like business development and human resources.

“The education platform we are developing is unique because it is interactive, trackable and truly custom built to our agents. As the program develops, it will house a one-stop shop for our agents to get a well-rounded education,” said Heather Stuart, Travel Masters’ product and support manager.
 
“If our agents want to learn, there is only one place they need to go to get the information that is truly relevant to them,” she added.

The online educational platform, which is set to launch in early July, will encompass interactive training modules, webinars and a database of informational sheets

Next time: A deeper look at what agencies are doing to retain new entrants