Travel agencies and other travel companies that hire staff to book travel are finding it more difficult than ever to find qualified applicants, good news for independent home-based agents who may be considering a switch to full-time staff employment.
More travel companies are open to and even encouraging applications from home-based agents and are even allowing them to continue working from home, said Doug Walsh, director of sales and marketing for Hot Travel Jobs, an industry employment firm.
“What I'm seeing … from my latest survey [of travel employers] is that they have had to hire someone with less experience or with [less skills]” because of a shortage of qualified candidates, Walsh said.
“I would think that home-based agents are the cat's meow right now because they have some experience booking travel.”
For the last several years, ASTA and other industry groups have warned of the coming shortage of agents as the baby-boomer generation of agents retires. Travel schools that produced a generation of travel agents have closed, shutting off that previously reliable pipeline to the profession. As a result, the shortage of agents is now very real and worsening by the month, according to Walsh.
“It's a job-seeker's market,” he said. Employers are looking for both corporate and leisure agents, and many companies that would not have considered it years ago now are willing to hire agents who work from home, he said.
“'Virtual jobs' has become a term that's used all the time [by employers]. In the past, you'd have to work in an office but as people are getting harder to find, [companies] will take a virtual agent. That's especially true on the corporate side.”
Walsh said home-based agents who have been independent throughout their career as well as relative newcomers to the industry are candidates for the open agency jobs.
“You've got a good number of home-based agents, such as at [large host agencies] that have thousands of agents affiliated with them. That's where the seeds are growing [for new agents].”
He added: “I see the resumes [from home-based agents] coming in … they want to work for someone. It's got to get lonely out there, and the benefits become important to some: having health insurance, paid vacation, a 401k and dental.”