SAN FRANCISCO -- A lack of interest in travel agency careers
contributed to the recent closure of Echols International Travel
Training, one of the West Coast's oldest and most well-respected,
privately run travel schools.
The school closed abruptly in mid-January after only eight
students signed up for its winter term and after the landlord of
the building which houses the school gave notice that the property,
in a prime downtown San Francisco location, would be used for a
Bloomingdale's department store.
Rather than look for new office space, the owners decided to
close the school and try to sell the business. There have been "a
few nibbles, thus far," said Nancy Rush, one of the owners. "We
felt we were getting a sign that it was time to close."
Echols was a family-run business that was started 25 years ago.
Rush's parents, Virginia and Fred Miller, ran the school until
their retirement a few years ago.
Virginia, who died last year, was a motherly figure to hundreds
of travel agents who graduated from Echols and continued to use the
school's job placement services throughout their careers.
After Virginia's and Fred's retirement, the school was operated
by Rush; her husband David, and her brother, David Miller, all
veterans in the travel agent training field. David Rush worked at
Echols for 21 years, Nancy for 19 years and David Miller for 18
years.
The school, which operated 11-week courses that trained students
to become travel agents, graduated an estimated 3,000 students,
most of whom work in Northern California. But, starting in 1990,
enrollment began to shrink.
"We went from having 45 students in each class to 25, and then
it started going lower," Nancy Rush said.
Ironically, low enrollment is coming at a time when there are
more jobs than there are graduates. All 23 graduates of Echols'
last class in December found jobs -- and at higher salaries than
ever.
"This is a great industry and it's growing, but that's not the
perception that people have," Nancy Rush said. "I wish the industry
would get a spokesman out there to make that point."
She said that the doomsayers who are predicting travel agencies'
decline because of the Internet are not taking into account the
boom in travel and the growth in specialty travel, inbound travel
and on-line agencies, which are desperate for staff.
In fact, David Rush has been hired by San Francisco-based
Preview Travel, one of the Internet's largest travel agencies, as
training director for its new reservations facility in Sacramento,
Calif., which is employing dozens of travel agents.
Marty Sarbey de Souto, an Echols instructor and a college
instructor in Northern California, called the Echols closure "the
end of an era."
She said other area community colleges offer travel agent
training, including Vista College, Canada College and Foothill
College, but all require two years to complete the certificate and
none offer the personal attention that Echols offered.
"There are lots of other schools, and there always will be, but
they have a different atmosphere. Echols was a family, and they
held your hand and found you a job. They were a very important part
of the travel agency community in the Bay Area," said de Souto.
"In general, the climate out there for all travel schools is not
good, and it's simply because so many people are bad-mouthing
travel agency work as a career. And it's coming at a time when the
travel industry is growing by leaps and bounds and needs new
people," said de Souto.
The Echols school was the last survivor of a small group of
travel agent schools of the same name in the U.S. Nancy Rush's
parents opened the San Francisco school in 1975 as a franchise
branch of International Travel Training, a Chicago-based agent
school owned by Evelyn Echols.
In 1980, Fred and Virginia Miller purchased the right to operate
the San Francisco school independently of Echols, although they
kept the name.
Evelyn Echols' two other franchise branches -- one in Los
Angeles and one in Washington -- also were forced to close in the
last few years. The original Chicago school closed last year.