Pam Lathrop, a trained CPA, didn’t get into the travel business at a good time. She opened her agency in 1997, during the same week that the airlines cut commissions.
Lathrop managed to build the agency to $2.5 million in annual gross sales within a year, but she found herself struggling to develop a specialty in adventure and exotic travel.
Lathrop sold her agency in 2007 but, after her noncompete agreement expired, wanted to get back to selling travel. By then home-based businesses were booming, and she jumped onboard.
“I decided that I missed sharing my love of travel, so I started back in the business,” she said. “And I have found that home-based agencies are now quite accepted by suppliers. The whole industry has changed dramatically. There’s no stigma like there used to be.”
Today, her home-based agency specializes in what she loves: adventure travel, much of it following her own footsteps.
Lathrop’s last vacation was to Easter Island in March, followed by hiking in Patagonia, Chile, a cruise through the Tierra del Fuego, followed by visits to Iguazu Falls and Buenos Aires. Next up is a Northwest Passage cruise by expedition ship from Greenland to Nome.
The way Northrop sees it, adventure travel is part of her DNA. She grew up skiing and hiking in Colorado, and after she married and started a family, “we hauled the kids through most of Mexico, throughout the U.S. and part of Canada” by car, train and bus.
Then the family moved to Tromso, Norway, a city north of the Arctic Circle where her husband had a position as medical professor and Lathrop became CFO of a company that was the Lloyds of London rep in Scandinavia. “Tromso is a very exotic and stunningly beautiful place to live, so we skied in the dark and hiked and kayaked and fished in the Midnight Sun.”
The family continued to travel extensively, throughout Europe, Asia, northern Africa and Russia, before returning to the Washington area in 1997, when she opened her agency after “spending my kids’ inheritance on traveling the world.”
Today she operates her home-based agency, Travel Xplorations, as a part-time venture and is happily pursuing her passion for adventure travel. She joined Vacation.com, which she was part of when she owned her brick-and-mortar business.
“When I restarted the agency I contacted Vacation.com because I wanted the ability to issue airline tickets,” she said. “That was critical. I knew what I had with Vacation.com and liked its preferred suppliers.”
At first Lathrop wasn’t sure home-based agency work was a good fit for her, a self-described “people person” who worried about the isolation of working at home.
But her old clients from her former agency kept calling and asking her to plan their vacations and, although she had plenty of work as accountant while her noncompete agreement was in place, wanted to get back to selling travel. Most of her sales are for extensive international travel to exotic destinations. Lathrop doesn’t plan many short vacations to domestic destinations or budget travel.
“I’m energized by my existing clientele who for most part are not price shoppers. They want value, and I care more about booking the right trip for them than anything else. That’s what gives me satisfaction.”
Lathrop said her sales often come after her own exotic trips. “I’m like a pied piper. I get so excited about my own travels that people seem to want to do what I’ve done.”
Even though she’s only working part time, Lathrop is setting her sights on expanding to other niches. Next up is grandparent travel to exotic destinations.