Embracing the youth movement

Navigating the professional landscape as a young travel advisor can be lonely. 

With the average travel agent age around 55, according to Phocuswright data, it can be hard for millennial and Gen Z advisors to relate to their more senior coworkers.

But those advisors say that as more young, like-minded people enter the industry, their experience changes.

And that’s the idea driving the momentum behind a resurgence of activity among the communities of young travel professionals who, through peer networks, have banded together over time to establish and solidify their place within the travel industry they are poised to one day dominate.

“You have to bring in new generations to keep the industry alive, and that’s really our goal — to give these people another place to feel connected because it’s a hard industry to start in,” said Summer Corbitt, director of business development at ASTA, about the organization’s Young Professionals Society (YPS), which launched in 2012 to help engage and connect travel advisors under the age of 40. 

Corbitt, YPS board president, is doing exactly that with the group’s latest venture, a reboot of its educational fam trips for members. 

Last month, YPS and Emerald Cruises teamed up to host the organization’s first fam trip in three years, onboard the Emerald Dawn for a Christmas market river cruise through Germany. The goal, Corbitt said, was to bring back the sense of community and career development resources that YPS has long been known for but lost over the course of the pandemic.

“What we really want to focus on with YPS [fams] is crafting our entire trip around some sort of education,” Corbitt said. 

The trips are intended to be like a master class, zeroing in on specific topics so that advisors can have an in-depth learning experience that can directly enhance their businesses and help them hone their craft.

YPS in action

Branding, specifically finding and defining one’s travel agency brand, was the focus of the December fam, which hosted over a dozen YPS members from across the U.S. on the eight-day sailing. The advisors participated in classes, training sessions and interactive exercises challenging them to think about what their brand says — not just about their business but about themselves. 

“It feels like there can be a saturation of travel advisors at times, so what makes your company — and you, specifically — different and unique is super-important,” said Ryan Corrigan, owner of Corrigan & Co. Luxury Travel Outfitters in Virginia Beach, Va., discussing the context of the business branding sessions she led for the YPS advisors onboard the Dawn. 

Corrigan, who is YPS secretary, said that being able to translate that unique quality about what your travel business offers into a marketing and branding strategy can ultimately help advisors reel in clients who are a better fit.

Among the exercises she has everybody do is choose who best personifies their company. 

“I love that exercise because it is very challenging, but when you think about it a bit more, it’s like having a figurehead or an icon for your business,” Corrigan said. “Kind of like how a lot of these cruise lines have a godmother of the ship — it’s their North Star.” 

Some advisors chose historical figures, musicians or philanthropists, while others chose fictional characters.

Shawn Kendall, owner of Trademark Vacations in Galva, Ill., and his sister Beth Joyce, a part-time advisor with Trademark, picked Claire Dunphy from the hit TV show “Modern Family,” for reasons that struck a chord with several advisors.

“She is a strong mother, a strong wife and she’s kind of the family leader — and that’s who we find in our clients,” Kendall said. “It’s typically mothers and wives that will come to us and say, ‘We want to plan this special anniversary trip for myself, my husband or take our family trip to Europe.’ And when you travel with families, it’s a huge amount of work. So they come to us because they want somebody else to do the heavy lifting, and it’s really rewarding to be able to do that.”

Ryan Choi, owner of Reston, Va.-based RC Tour Network and its LGBTQ travel counterpart, RC Pride Travel, found the training sessions onboard particularly helpful. He asked Corrigan how she reaches her luxury clientele — via print, digital, a mixture of both? — and listened carefully when his peers talked about what worked for them when it came to attracting new business. 

“Sometimes I struggle with questions like, ‘How can I develop or promote my company.’ It is not always easy to talk with somebody else,” Choi said. “But because we are working in the same industry and are in the same association, I think that’s a big advantage. We get to know each other, we talk about our companies; all of these things are very helpful.”

This open exchange of ideas, advice and knowledge among peers who can relate to one another’s shared experiences is what Corbitt calls the heart of YPS — and its mission now is to keep the momentum going. 

“We want to make sure that they feel like they have a place, an outlet, if they’re having issues, if they have questions, if they need ideas, ” Corbitt said. “YPS is that place for a new generation of travel advisors.”

Millennials in Travel

ASTA’s network for young travel advisors is not the only community of its kind that is looking to reinvent itself and its purpose as its members emerge from the pandemic. 

Ten years ago Millennials in Travel came onto the scene as a social collective aimed at providing a networking space for travel professionals born after 1975 that could help them develop, grow and evolve their careers.

The group is open to all types of travel industry professionals, including advisors, suppliers and journalists, and today has a robust, 3,300-member network with nine chapters located in major cities across the country.

While its mission to help members connect is still a top priority, Millennials in Travel says its purpose recently broadened to focus on becoming a resource for the travel industry at large when it comes to the travel needs, trends and desires of millennials and the young traveler market. 

“‘What do millennials want?’ That’s how we have been utilized as a resource for other organizations, companies, tourism boards, etc.,” said Joshua Smith, director of strategic development for the group. “We work on projects polling our membership or holding focus groups to understand what are the needs, and the changing needs, and it helps those organizations be more efficient and effective in the marketplace.”

Supplier support

Hien Cao, director of sales teams and trade partnerships for Scenic Group USA, Emerald’s parent company, is the one who approached YPS to host the fam trip. 

The line has been actively working to attract the younger traveler market to its products through new marketing campaigns; rebranding itineraries to promote a more active cruise experience; and partnering with organizations like YPS to directly tap into the demographic.

Cao said she wanted to support the industry’s younger members, and the group representing them, which she said is a “small subgroup that it seems like no one cares about.” 

“The young professional group is so small, demographics-wise, but these are people that I think are very important to nurture and to help them to grow,” Cao added. 

Emerald has found there is a shift in the river cruise demographic already underway and that in the next few years the average age will get younger. Its goal is to familiarize younger travelers with river cruising and position Emerald as their river cruise brand of choice. 

“That’s why we came up with the idea and ran with it,” Cao said. “We don’t believe that river cruising is only for a more mature audience anymore. So our hope is to spread the word out there to make sure that this young professional group knows about our brands, Emerald Cruises and Scenic Luxury Cruises, and from there can introduce them to their younger clients.” 

Corbitt also said that while the younger generation of travel advisors still needs more resources, the situation has improved, in part because social media and blogging became a gateway to bookings for these advisors and helped exhibit their importance with younger travelers. 

“I think it’s getting better,” she said. “But there is still a huge gap in people who’ve been in the industry for a very long time and have a ton of experience and the new generation who is now coming in and having to bridge that gap.”

Looking ahead

Among the efforts Millennials in Travel is working on for 2023 is encouraging more millennials to not only join the travel industry but to join other industry organizations, which Smith said “keeps the industry thriving.” 

“I would love to have stronger relationships,” Smith said. “I’ve sat on the board with the USTOA. We have strong relationships with ASTA. We’re supportive of the travel advocacy that the U.S. Travel Association is doing. If it’s something that is going to benefit the industry, we’re going to allocate resources or communication to focus on that.”

The group also wants to get back to its roots by hosting more in-person networking events in its chapter cities and more fam trips, which Smith said there is growing interest in as budgets for such gatherings are returning to pre-pandemic figures. 

As for YPS, plans are already in the works for its next fam trip, which will take place in the Bahamas and focus on video branding and editing. Though no official date has been released, Corbitt said the class will cover everything from shooting video on iPhones and professional cameras to rules and regulations for flying drones, and it will also include a session on putting together sizzle reels that YPS advisors can use for marketing. 

“We start with the idea of what we want to learn and then we build the fam around it. That’s kind of the new angle for YPS going forward,” Corbitt said. “We want to be thought leaders. The nice thing about this — going on YPS trips and having that topic — is that it becomes a big idea-share and how you can put that into your own business.”