Travel agents are staging a big comeback

Interested in a career that can take your places? Enjoy working with people in many different and challenging situations? Then consider becoming a travel agent working in a traditional store front agency or from home as a home based seller of travel.

Written off as a dinosaur in the age of the Internet and technology today the travel agency business is enjoying a brisk comeback and many agencies are actually experiencing record sales and profits.

The new agency business model includes a large amount of personal service and product knowledge. These are benefits that you cannot receive from any on-line booking site that I am aware of. Hurricane Dean just pitted live agents versus their web competitors and story after story provided information on how local travel agents worked to rebook and re accommodate their customers while you heard nothing but frustrations from travelers that couldn’t talk to their web site.

Here are a couple of articles from Smart Money magazine http://www.smartmoney.com/mag/index.cfm?story=june2007-travel and the New York Times http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/business/03agents.html that discuss the rebirth of the travel agency business.

Locally travel agent training courses are offered on the Ironton and Proctorville campuses of Ohio University and on-line at www.travelcampus.com/tat. Feel free to contact me for more information on a career in travel, tourism and hotel management.

Be kind to your travel agent and get out of town!