WASHINGTON — The travel industry is "remarkably resilient," ASTA CEO Zane Kerby said, despite the many headwinds affecting it of late.
He rattled off a number of them at the National Press Club here on Monday, during ASTA's Travel Industry Forecast: "Unpredictable and sudden shifts in pricing, product perishability, weather disruptions, labor unrest and strikes, the price of oil, computer hacks and bugs, political posturing, State Department warnings, war, tariffs, stock market fluctuations.
"This is starting to sound like that Billy Joel song," Kerby quipped. "And I'm just talking about last week."
In short, Kerby said, "Sometimes, it feels like everything affects travel." But despite those factors, the industry -- along with most agencies -- is healthy.
The number of Americans leaving the country to travel has outpaced prepandemic levels, Kerby said, with 90 million leaving the country in 2019 and more than 107 million leaving the country last year. The outbound travel trend continues this year.
ASTA polls conducted throughout the year have painted a picture of what travel agencies have experienced throughout all the external factors. While agencies had "great trepidation" in February and March, that has largely subsided.
"The vast majority of businesses are reporting growth," Kerby said. "Not everyone, but most."
Surge in new travel advisors
That boom in travel, Kerby said, has led to another phenomenon in people joining the industry as advisors in great numbers. It's largely an unregulated industry, though, minus four states that require some kind of registration. Those states don't require any educational component for registration.
"As the profession's reputation manager, it's essential for ASTA to define and promote qualified travel advisors, and we are," he said.
The Society has done that through its Verified Travel Advisor (VTA) certification program. It recently introduced new criteria, including sales experience and recertification, for advisors to continue holding the VTA designation.
ASTA also unveiled VeriVacation.com this year, a database of those VTAs that connects consumers with quality advisors. At the beginning of the year, there were several hundred VTAs, Kerby said. By the end of the year, there will be several thousand. ASTA is also putting more money behind promoting VeriVacation.com.
Currently, "several thousand" consumers visit the site daily, and it is generating "substantial business" for the advisors featured, Kerby said.
The challenge of professionalism
The onslaught of new advisors came up several times on a panel about leisure travel held after Kerby's remarks.
Nicole Mazza, chief marketing officer of Travelsavers, NEST and the Affluent Traveler Collection, said the biggest challenge facing the travel profession today is professionalism.
"This is our industry. We need to protect it. We need to be brand ambassadors for it," she said. "We need to ensure those coming into our industry are good ambassadors for our industry."
Largay Travel in Waterbury, Conn., is doing that through a mentoring program that's been in place for around 15 years, said president and co-owner Amanda Klimak. Over the course of eight months, advisors go through extensive training. They're also paired with a buddy who helps educate them, she said.
Investing in new advisors is a good move for an agency, according to Klimak. They bring with them an entirely new network of potential clients.
But there is a whole new group of advisors who have joined the industry lately.
"There's a lot of ads on Instagram and things like that — 'Be an agent in 24 hours,' 'Pay $29.95,' 'I live on the beach and I do email for an hour,'" she said. "And we know, that's not reality, right? But a lot of people don't. They don't realize, so they pay the money."
To counter that, Klimak said, Largay constantly talks about why its advisors are professionals, what they do, how much they train and how much they, themselves, travel and use that knowledge to help clients.
Like Largay, Global Escapes in Athens, Ga., also employs mentoring to train new advisors, said CEO Tiffany Hines. She's also created processes for advisors to follow.
"What we do is very complex," she said. "It is very high-level consulting, advising."
When asked what single industry issue she would fix if she could wave a magic wand, Hines said it was directly related to that complexity: "The misconception of our profession."
Often, new agents come in thinking they'll profit easily, but that's not the case.
Mazza's answer to the same question: "A higher bar of entry into our industry."