Jamie Biesiada
Some eight years ago, Cathie Lentz Fryer, president of CTA Travel in Cerritos, Calif., noticed some changes in the travel agency community.
"The industry's completely different," she recalled thinking. "We are true advisors. We are true salespeople. We're not travel agents."
In recent years, the rest of the industry has jumped onboard that line of thinking, as well. Perhaps most impactful was ASTA's 2018 rebranding from the American Society of Travel Agents to the American Society of Travel Advisors.
The change hasn't been completely smooth sailing, of course; change rarely goes off without a hitch. "Travel agent" generally performs better on search engines, for example, and the public is already familiar with the term.
But there are indications that "travel advisor" is on the rise.
Travel Weekly's 2019 Travel Industry Survey found that 27% of respondents described themselves as "travel advisors," up from 11% the year prior. In second and third place were the terms "travel consultant" (26%) and "travel agent" (25%). The terms "travel consultant" and "travel specialist" (12%) each fell by 8 percentage points from the year prior.
It's a warranted change. That is perhaps best highlighted by the roles travel advisors have taken on recently as they help travelers -- both clients and nonclients -- navigate the Covid-19 crisis. From the beginning, agents have been trusted advisors providing clients with factual information and assistance with canceling or rebooking travel.
Perhaps, too, consumers are more likely to heed the advice of an advisor, not an agent, when they're being encouraged to postpone trips instead of canceling.
For Fryer, the realization that agents truly had shifted into advisors resulted in some big changes at CTA.
"I decided it was time to have everybody reapply for their position in the company," she said.
At the time, there were only two agents -- who are still with CTA today -- whom she would have hired. The rest, not so much. She sat with each of the agents to evaluate what they wanted to do, and the determination in most cases was they wanted to be traditional ticketing agents, not salespeople.
Since then, Fryer has brought on five new advisors. She describes it as the "best thing I ever did in my life -- went looking for the ideal person that had the ideal characteristics."
That didn't mean experience in travel, which is something Fryer views as a plus but not necessary.
Today, each of Fryer's eight advisor employees does more than $1 million in annual sales and is on a growth path. Her agency's annual gross sales are just over $13.5 million; compare that with annual sales of barely $2 million when she joined Signature Travel Network 22 years ago.
She has also continued the practice of asking employees to "apply" for their jobs.
Every two years, her advisors complete a self-evaluation and essentially reinterview for their positions in a discussion about their goals and future. They do well, Fryer said, because she picked her team using the right characteristics: sales skills, personality, communication skills.
"I can teach anybody who is the right person how to craft experiences and create new memories," she said. "We don't sell travel. [Clients] can buy travel by the push of a button online. And if you talk to my team, they will tell you that's not their job, to sell travel. Their job is to partner with our current guests to craft the experiences that they're not going to get if they try to craft it themselves."