Jobs Report: Despite the Stock Market, Agency Hiring Outlook Looks Strong

The first installment in a series on travel-agency staffing trends.

A volatile stock market notwithstanding, agency owners, industry consultants, and staffing experts anticipate a continued healthy jobs outlook for both new and experienced travel agents in 2016.

Their anecdotal reports, while less optimistic than at this time last year, still are in marked contrast to recent gloomy projections from the U.S. Department of Labor. The department’s Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2016-17 Edition, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, forecast a 2% per year decline in travel agency jobs in the decade from 2014 to 2024.

The reality is quite different.

Consultant Robert W. Joselyn estimated that this year about half of the 160 agencies that participate in his group TAMS will be hiring to fill new positions.

Another 20% to 25% of TAMS members likely will hire to replace existing staff who either retire or leave to become independents, predicted Joselyn, who is president and CEO of the financial data benchmarking and best practices organization.

Wanted: qualified corporate agents
As has been true for a while, the outlook is stronger in corporate travel than in leisure.

“Corporate has really been growing. I don’t think the leisure market is growing that much,” Joselyn said.

Conlin Travel, Inc., a $140 million travel management company in Ann Arbor, MI, is one corporate agency that has expanded its staff significantly. The TMC, whose business is 95% corporate, hired 18 people in 2015, said president Chris Conlin.

And he’s not stopping. “We’re always hiring, so I’m sure we’ll hire in 2016,” he said.

In Lake Forest, CA, Travel Placement Service, Inc., a company that specializes in staffing for corporate agencies, always has a sizable backlog of corporate agency jobs to fill. “In 24 years, there never has been a qualified agent, meaning a Sabre-trained agent, that could not find work,” said president and owner Cheryl Rodgers.

Instead, the challenge is attracting new people into the corporate-travel hiring pool, she said, adding that Travel Placement Service recently initiated several programs to do just that.

Leisure jobs on the rise as well
Over the years, the job market on the leisure side has been more subject to ups and downs. But recent consumer spending on vacations has been healthy, so much so that McCabe World Travel, a $40 million high-end leisure agency in McLean, VA, hired four new people in 2015. Three of the hires were to fill newly created positions. CEO Damian McCabe, CTC, said she anticipates adding two more staff positions in 2016.

Even smaller leisure agencies expanded staff in 2015. Edgewood Travel, a five-person agency in Savannah, GA, brought on three new employees last year, two to fill newly created positions. “We had a fantastic 2014 and a good 2015,” said owner Valerie Edgemon.

The stock market’s dismal showing in the first weeks of January is making Edgemon jittery about 2016 though, and she now feels fairly certain she won’t be expanding her staff again this year.

 High anxiety
“We were anticipating a good 2016,” she said. But now, between the uncertainties of world events, an election year, and the shaky stock market, “it feels like there’s this possibility of a perfect storm.”

Those same factors also had Joselyn tempering his expectations about travel agency hiring in 2016.

While “all traditional economic indicators look strong for 2016, so I’m cautiously optimistic,” there are two wildcards for 2016: terrorism and the national election.

“I think hiring is going to be down from the past couple of years,” Joselyn said. “If I were in a business and looking at capital expenditures, I’d put it off.”

Identifying the opportunities
Still, though, for agents in the job market, the realities of an aging industry bring job opportunities even if employers are not in a growth mode.

“I talked to a [leisure] agency yesterday that’s been in business for 20 years. They’ve lost three people, so they’re going to be hiring,” Joselyn said.

Jason King, president and CEO of New York-based executive search, staffing, and consulting firm P. Jason King Associates, sees several emerging opportunities as agencies look to grow.

One area is in corporate groups. King expects even smaller agencies to expand into servicing the meetings, incentives, and conference needs of current and future clients—and TMCs that already have a sizable group business will expand and create job openings. “Usually they need dedicated agents for those specific areas, [so] it will spur new jobs,” he said. 

He also sees agencies of all sizes hiring new staffers to service new business generated by their online efforts. And a third area of potential jobs growth is in customer service, which has grown increasingly critical to success, even in smaller agencies.

Coming up in part 2: Who’s paying what? A look at compensation trends in retail travel.