Today’s travel agent
Remember when booking a vacation meant visiting a travel agency that overflowed with brochures of exotic places?
Please. That’s so 1990.
Deserted by Internet-savvy shoppers and starved by the loss of airline commissions in the last decade, many bricks-and-mortar travel sellers have closed up shop.
But more than 100,000 people in the United States still work as travel agents, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A growing number have left the office and gone home. Working in their houses, hotel rooms or even coffee shops, they’ve shed overhead and serve customers from personal computers or laptops or by phone.
Some book airline tickets and general travel; some handle only cruises or packaged tours. Some work alone; some hook up with big agencies or networks. Some make themselves available around the clock; others put in time at night after their day jobs.
Many home-based travel agents – more than 40 percent, by one estimate – worked in traditional agency offices, sometimes for decades, before “going home.” Many have specialized knowledge or offer personal services, such as delivering travel documents to clients’ homes. Some charge less for their services than the going rate.
The challenge for consumers is finding these agents, who mostly get work by referral, and evaluating their credentials. There’s no central database listing and in most states, anyone can hang out a shingle and claim to sell travel products.
In fact, no one really knows how many home-based travel agents are at work, although everyone I talked with agreed their ranks are growing.
Joanie Ogg, president of the Alexandria, Va.-based National Association of Commissioned Travel Agents, a 19-year-old organization for home-based agents, says her group recently counted 3,500 members – up from fewer than 1,000 in 2001.
Ogg estimates there are 40,000 full- or part-time home-based travel agents in North America. A report released in January by Credit Suisse First Boston gave a lower estimate for the United States – 15,000 to 20,000 – but predicted annual growth of 10 percent to 15 percent through the end of the decade.
Carnival Cruise Lines figures it might get 5 percent to 15 percent of its business from home-based agents, says Vicki Freed, senior vice president of sales and marketing.
The two major reasons agents are rushing back home: technology and money.
Agents can access booking programs, called global distribution systems, from any computer, instead of depending on special equipment provided by a distributor.
Another reason to work from home is low overhead. That need for savings became urgent when major airlines decided, starting in 1995, to reduce and finally end the 10 percent commissions on plane tickets they paid travel agents.
Janet Turner, president of Turner Travels in Atlanta, moved her agency home in the 1990s, before the final commission elimination.
“I said the day would come when the airlines would stop paying commissions,” she says. “I was going to make my money off tours, cruises and packages. Everyone thought I was crazy.”
Today she sells $1 million worth of cruises, honeymoons and other packaged travel per year. She doesn’t sell plane tickets, except as part of a package.
Turner gets customers from referrals and from her Web site ( www.turnertravels.us), and does most bookings by phone. She sometimes schmoozes with new clients at Starbucks outlets.
She does less business than when she had a storefront, but her profit margin is higher, and she relishes her freedom.
“I do my best work in my pajamas,” she says.
Chris Van Beveren, owner of Los Angeles-based Beck Travel, runs a more buttoned-down operation from home, supervising a dozen home-based agents who sell air travel and other products to 600 clients a year.
The low overhead helps keep her service fee to $25 per invoice, regardless of party size, versus the $35 or $50 per ticket that many agents charge.
Like many home-based agents, Jennifer Schreiber of Long Beach, Calif., is a part-time, independent contractor. She has about 30 clients and splits commissions with her host agency, PNR Travel of Marina del Rey, Calif.
A flight attendant on corporate jets, Schreiber spends about 200 days each year away from home, laptop in tow.
“When I get into my hotel at night, I start returning phone calls,” she says.
Travelers can check out a home-based agent in several ways. Among them:
•Get references. Ask your family, friends or church or community groups for names of agents they’ve worked with.
•Ask about credentials. States generally don’t license travel agents, but there are other credentials that bolster credibility.
Agents who sell airline tickets in the United States generally must be authorized by the Airlines Reporting Corp. Agents also might carry an ID card from the International Airlines Travel Agent Network which requires registrants to offer proof of financial responsibility.
The best-known professional association is the American Society of Travel Agents (www.astanet.com). Among agents most highly regarded within the industry are the estimated 25,000 who have undergone training and obtained certificates from the Travel Institute, a private nonprofit based in Wellesley, Mass. (www.thetravelinstitute.com).