The Best Cities For Travel Agents

Quincy Market in Boston, MA. Photo: Chris Wood

Boston, Santa Ana, CA, and North Port, FL, are the three best large, mid-tier, and small cities in America to be a travel agent, according to a recent study by a personal finance website.

ValuePenguin.com, which conducts research on a variety of topics including insurance, credit cards, and everyday spending, scored 164 cities based on the average salary, number of jobs, cost of living, and “location quotient” for travel agents.

A place with a high median salary and low cost of living may seem perfect, ValuePenguin said, but job opportunities may be limited there. Location quotient measures the concentration of travel agents in an area as a percentage of all occupations, and then compares that to the national average. The company interprets a higher location quotient to mean a relatively higher demand for travel agents’ services.

The company used mostly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Boston was rated the best large city (over 500,000 in population), Santa Ana the best with 100,000-500,000 residents, and North Port the best with fewer than 100,000 citizens.

“For the travel agents who will be working in the mid-term and long-term future, these are the best of the best in terms of cities,” said Andrew Pentis, the ValuePenguin researcher who conducted the research and wrote the report.

Boston (including suburbs Cambridge and Quincy) ranked number one because it scored in the top 10 in two categories: number of jobs (sixth), and annual average salary (fourth)—$51,090, or 41% more than the study’s average. The company also noted that Massachusetts residents have the second-largest share of U.S. passports among their peer states.

Second on the list of large cities was the metro San Francisco area, which overcame having a cost of living double the average American city. Dallas, which came in third for large cities, has the fifth most travel agent jobs in the country, 1,570, and a cost of living 5% lower than the average. The Dallas region incorporates Plano and Irving.

Boulder, CO, was the second best mid-tier city (and fourth overall) according to ValuePenguin, despite the fact it employs only 120 travel agents. Agents there earn the highest average annual salary at $61,640.

The third best mid-tier city was Bridgeport, CT. Peabody, MA, and Reading, PA, rounded out the top three small cities list.