LAS VEGAS – Call it the summer of travel hell, call it airmageddon, or call it something that can’t be printed in a family newspaper. Regardless of the timing, the recent spate of flight cancellations, staff shortages, lost luggage, and changes in COVID-19 restrictions have helped improve a long-standing project. his thoughts are reduced: the travel consultant.
“All of a sudden, I feel like I’m showing up again,” said Susan Bowman, a travel consultant in Toronto. “It’s been a very busy summer, and I don’t see it slowing down anytime soon. It’s been a renewal for us.”
Last week Virtuoso Travel Week, an annual gathering of 5,000 travel consultants in Las Vegas, the speech was not aimed at customers on websites such as Travelocity and Expedia. Instead, for the first time in nearly a decade, the scuttlebutt was as much about the record requirements, overall schedule, and editing of client lists as the need for travel consultant balloons. This is the best thing to happen in the industry since the travel agents officially rebranded themselves as travel advisors in 2018. Agent or advisor, the bottom line is shaking.
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It’s a reasonable response to the current cost of travel. Summer vacationers are tired of spending hours waiting to speak with flight attendants, hotels fighting for refunds, or rebooking cruises with new COVID-19 threats. They want someone else to do it.
“People can book trips for themselves, but, as they found out this summer, that also means dealing with everything that goes wrong along the way,” said Teresa Ford Chope, is the founder of Boston-based Boost Journeys. “But if we write it, we will fix it. I started my company in 2016 to help people plan beautiful routes, but now I am a travel doctor. At least once a week, I get a call from a client who is worried about a trip. So, we don’t just plan travel for them, we also take care of everything. We focus on all the information and help with the COVID emergency planning. That’s a new role for us.”
Chope, who works in luxury travel and is part of the Virtuoso consortium of agencies, missed the conference in Las Vegas last week because he was too busy with clients. But not only the luxury market is full of new and returning customers. Elaine Osgood of Marlborough-based Atlas Travel is also seeing an influx of vacationers who are choosing to outsource their vacations to someone else. Atlas is currently hiring to meet the demand.
“If you book online, who do you call to try to help get your money back? Or, who do you call to rebook the trip at another time? Those people are never worked with a professional traveler they quickly realized how painful and time-consuming it is to try to take care of themselves,” Osgood said. “We have cruises that we already book and write again. You lose reading after a while.”
It’s an unusual and welcome change for a work that has spent years fighting the idea that it’s as relevant as phones or the CEO of Friendster. As third-party carriers (known in the industry as over-the-air carriers or OTAs) have proliferated over the past 20 years, reducing the number of migrants. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of permanent immigrants in the United States fell from a high of 124,000 in 2000 to 74,000 in 2014.
The agency put the number of permanent travelers at 70,000 in 2019 and expects the industry to lose 25 percent of its workforce by 2029.
But this summer presented some challenges that even the most experienced DIY travelers had a hard time breathing. Traveling came back faster than anyone imagined. The result is a fire of vacation debris.
Americans are traveling at — and in some cases, higher than — pre-epidemic levels. The US Travel Association found that travel spending in July 2022 exceeded the number of July 2019, despite inflation and higher airfares. Many studies have found that most Americans have traveled, or plan to travel, before the end of the summer. A recent survey, from the website Vacationer, found that 80 percent of Americans said they would travel this summer.
Boston writer Karen Winn, 40, is one of those travelers who turns to a travel consultant when the challenges and limitations of a family trip begin to seem insurmountable. widely in Sicily. A 2021 study from the American Society of Travel Advisors found that 81 percent of inquiries are from first-time travelers like Winn.
“I’ve never used a travel agent before,” Winn said. “But between finding hotel rooms and figuring out flight options, it was clear I had to use one. I was overwhelmed.”
When the Biden administration removed the COVID-19 testing requirements for foreign travel, the floodgates literally opened on European destinations. Descriptions of European airports as “hellscapes” did not stop Americans from packing their luggage – luggage that was apparently lost in the ensuing attack.
The economy, political unrest, and viruses have not slowed the thirst for travel. Nearly 70 percent of Americans said they would travel this summer “no matter what,” according to a survey earlier this month from McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. The same survey asked, “Imagine you win $10,000 in the lottery. How are you going to spend this cash?” The number two answer is travel. (The top answer is savings.)
Those numbers, along with the lack of workers, have made for some serious problems. Unfortunately, travel advisors are also finding themselves in trouble. Customers are back, but many consultants left during the pandemic.
In Tennessee, Michelle Shrader, a consultant with InteleTravel, said her bookings are up 300 percent over 2019. In Ohio, travel consultant Crystal Teter from Go See Travel has more research in six months ago than three years ago. The advisors are trying to keep up and adapt to the new needs of travelers.
“Our work has changed dramatically during the pandemic,” said Beth Washington of the Washington, D.C.-based Getaway Guild office. “So one trip may take X number of hours to plan, it may take twice as long now with questions and concerns from travelers, and also spend an hour and 45 minutes waiting to an airline or company if there is a problem. .”
As a result, consultants – especially those in the luxury sector – should be more careful with their client lists. Many consultants make more of their income from booking incentives offered by cruise lines, hotels, and tour operators than from their clients. But depending on the trip or the agency, including the estimated fees. The consultants we spoke to are hoping that customers will continue to see the value that their expertise can provide, even after the current flood.
“Every time something happens — SARS, 9/11, COVID — the mindset is, well, it’s going to destroy the travel industry and be the end for travel consultants,” said Osgood of Atlas. Travel. “But we are very resilient. Every time we come back, we come back stronger because we learn something new about the business, and we learn how to do more with less. I think the message from this summer is, again, we’re back.”
Christopher Muther can be reached at christopher.muther@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Chris_Muther and Instagram @chris_muther.
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