Near the close of last week's ASTA World Travel Congress in Las
Vegas, the Society's national secretary Eric Ardolino, was talking
about one of the major issues facing the trade: finding good
agents.
He was part of a small delegation of agents on the ASTA
Executive Committee who were talking with reporters. Other agents
around the table were ASTA vice president Kathy Sudeikis, CTC, and
Mary Louise Seifert, who is now the national treasurer of the
Society.
Ardolino was saying that finding new employees is a huge issue
in the industry. Personally, he said, his agency has had good luck
with bringing in people with no previous travel experience.
"I train them in the way we want to operate," he said. "And that
works out well."
Seifert said that the training time required for neophytes can
be a problem for agencies. That's why most advertising looking for
agents includes a requirement that the applicant have previous
experience on whatever computer reservations system the agency
uses.
Sudeikis noted that some travel agencies are having success by
bringing in people with banking or general retailing experience.
The newcomers with the banking background, she said, seem to adapt
well with the administrative work because they're used to dealing
in a high-transaction environment.
The need to attract new people to retail travel may be the
single biggest problem for the trade. It's reflected in the average
age of ASTA members as well.
In his inaugural speech, the new ASTA president Richard Copland
acknowledged the situation. "We know our demographics are starting
to skew toward the gray hair and away from the youth. This needs to
change."
Several factors are affecting the job pool in retail travel as
in other industries.
The economy continues to offer great opportunities in the
Internet world; college graduates are coming out of school with
lucrative offers to enter private industry, and retail travel
remains a relatively low-paying business.
It's not as easy as it may have been in the past to attract
neophytes to travel with promises of exotic trips. Young people
want to get a piece of the action in the fast-paced e-world.
But excellent career opportunities still exist in the travel
field and everyone has to work harder to convey that message to the
next generation of workers.