Demand for Professional Travel Advisors Will Never Wane, Execs Say

The travel agency industry still needs new entrants. Maybe not as direly as it did three years ago, but there’s still an enormous amount of demand from travelers to fill. And even more demand the industry needs to continue to generate. It’s a cycle that will never end.  

In the fifth and final article in TMR’s series checking in on the state of the industry with eight consortia, host, and franchise executives, we talked about whether the agency industry is or ever will be “staffed up,” as well as the importance of training both in terms of getting new advisors up to speed as fast as possible and in maintaining a level of professionalism that’s essential to the trade’s long-term success.

More than anything, executives were clear on one thing: the more travel advisors there are that our out in the world interacting with consumers on a daily basis, the more those consumers understand the benefits of using an advisor and the more they’ll use advisors.

“The growth and diversity of our advisor base is essential to meeting the dynamic needs of travelers today and in the future,” Phil Cappelli, chief sales officer at Avoya Travel, told TMR.

On the flip side of that same coin, the more advisors that are out there having successful careers, the more other people will want to join the industry.

Either way you look at it, the more advisors there are is a winning situation, which means you can never really have enough advisors.

“I don’t think we’re staffed up,” Drew Daly, senior vice president and general manager of Dream Vacations, told TMR. “There’s still a need.”

Cappelli agreed.

“The age of experienced advisors is probably my biggest concern,” he told TMR. “Many seasoned advisors are retiring, and there’s a gap that needs to be filled by new talent.”

“Every agency should be hiring all the time,” added Alex Sharpe, president & CEO of Signature Travel. “Thinking about it and finding those perfect business people who are connected and passionate about travel. I don’t think we ever have enough.”

Michael Johnson, president of Ensemble, agreed.

“I would say that there’s absolutely room to continue to grow. We might be staffed up to a historical point in time, but we just talked about cruises continuing to grow and air, so all of this is continuing to grow and as a result there continues to be a need for new to the industry.”

But finding the right advisors, getting them up to speed, and making sure the industry – as a whole – maintains a professional reputation presents several challenges.

Staffing challenges

Finding talent – whether employees or independent consultants – continues to be a challenge for the travel advisor industry.

“For hiring in the United States, 93% of management is planning on hiring on the agency side this year,” said David Kolner, executive vice president of Virtuoso. “We still need so many people to join the industry.”

And people are joining, at higher levels than ever before. Cruise Planners, Nexion, Avoya, and TRAVELSAVERS told us they’re adding new agencies and advisors at a record pace and in record numbers.

“We are at a record pace through the first five months of the year for bringing in new advisors,” said Jackie Friedman, president of Nexion Travel Group.

“We’re growing like crazy though. We went over 2000 advisors last week,” Cappelli said.

“We had the best year every last year,” Michelle Fee, CEO and founder of Cruise Planners said. “I would say about 70% of everyone we bring onboard has never been in travel before.”

Part of the reason for so many new entrants, Friedman said, is a desire among many people – of all ages – to be independent.

“They want flexibility. They want to be able to determine where they work, when they work, how they work. They got used to working virtually when they had to during the pandemic.”

Though many agency owners – and, of course, hosts – are looking for ICs, Kolner pointed out that among Virtuoso agency owners, nearly 50% are looking to hire full-time employee advisors – a number he called “shocking.”

Also, for the first time since TMR began doing this series executives aren’t only talking about finding front-line advisors. There is a growing need for people to help with back-office tasks. 

According to Kolner, of Virtuoso advisors planning on hiring, 73% are looking to hire support staff.

Friedman, echoed Kolner.

“One of the things we’re seeing that’s very interesting is some of them are looking for assistance offshore… The advisor sits back and thinks, where do I add the most value? Am I adding the most value sitting on hold, waiting to call in final payment or invoicing, or am I adding the most value talking to customers, qualifying customers and selling?”

Getting advisors up to speed quickly

We also heard more about the importance of training and getting people up-to-speed quickly, which is the reason most of the agency consortia, hosts, and franchises have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into training programs.

Training programs are particularly attractive to new entrants TRAVELSAVERS’ chief sales officer Kathryn Mazza-Burney told TMR.

“It’s a lot more than just training existing advisors. It’s bringing new into the business… which is what we know is still the real need within the industry,” said Mazza-Burney.

And it’s working, she added. “We’ve had more graduates of KORE this year than we had in the last two years.”

Training programs have the added benefit of getting new-to-industry advisors up and running quickly.

“We look at the type of advisor that we believe we can get up and running relatively quickly,” said Friedman. “Take the cruise market. There’s such amazing training out there with what we have and the training that the cruise lines have that someone can get up and running a little faster… I always say learn more about less rather than less about more, and then they can go from there and expand.”

Cappelli agreed. “It costs a lot to bring those people [new advisors] up. The support calls are constant. We want to get people up to speed as fast as possible.”

Getting new advisors up and running isn’t only important to the bottom line of the consortia, hosts, and franchises at a corporate levels. It’s important to the advisors themselves, and their belief that being a travel advisor is a good career decision.

“As an industry, we have a responsibility. And I don’t know that we always take this seriously, but we have a responsibility to set new to industry people up for success,” Ensemble’s Johnson told TMR.

With such a huge focus on bringing new people into the industry, Virtuoso’s Kolner also emphasized the importance of retaining the advisors we already have.

“It’s important to spend a little bit of time thinking about your staffing either in your own agency or if you’re an advisor with an assistant, make sure you’re taking care of those people because it’s going to be really hard to train and replace them if they leave,” Kolner said.

Staying professional

Bringing on new advisors continues to be critical, but at the same time, the quality of new advisors entering the market also weighs heavily on executives’ minds.

“The professionalism in our industry is really, really important,” Friedman said. “People need to understand that this is not for the faint of heart. It takes work and you need to approach it as a business and not as a hobby.”

“There’s a lot of MLMs in the business that are coming in with a lot of hobbyists that aren’t true travel professionals,” added Mazza-Burney. “I love that people are looking to enter the travel here because we need it, we just need them to be more educated. I stay awake at night thinking about that.”

When asked what she would change for the industry if given a magic wand, Friedman zeroed in on the industry’s professionalism right away.

“If I had a magic wand, I would love to see a little bit more of a threshold to entry into the industry… You look at other industries that have some kind of standard that people have to achieve… It takes very little to say, I’m a travel advisor.”

She mentioned ASTA’s Verified Travel Advisor program, along with CLIA’s and The Travel Institute’s certifications as programs advisors should be thinking about.

“We have to make sure there’s a certain standard because the worst thing we can do is say, book with a travel advisor. And then you hearing about folks that may not be ready making some mistakes. And those always are very interesting for the media,” Freidman warned.

And for those who get burned by so-called travel advisors? “I think that they won’t use an advisor again,” Mazza-Burney said. “And that’s an issue.”

More training

Keeping the advisor community professional and the reputation of advisors golden brings us back to the topic of training.

In the early days of an advisor’s career, training is what gets new entrants up to speed quickly, but training needs to be comprehensive – particularly for things like ethics and business operations – and it needs to be continuing.

Ensemble and Travel Leaders, for instance, offers multiple tracks in their training programs.

“Training needs to be segmented based on need,” said Johnson. “Experienced advisors likely need training on new products. New to industry need to understand, how does travel work, how do I execute a booking, what does insurance look like…”