Don’t call it a Comeback… Travel Advisors and Their new Expectation.
If Travel Advisors are to attain their forecast, eminent revived relevance, they must acknowledge, adapt, and be proactive.
Increasingly publications and travel industry professionals in the know, are shamelessly expressing their confidence that the importance and value of travel advising will be rediscovered because of Covid19. This confident forecast defines the new expectation for the profession of travel advising. This is good news for professional travel advisors, but there is work to be done to make it a reality. That work entails doing these three things – acknowledge, adapt and be proactive.
Acknowledge – Now is the time for brutal honesty. If there are opportunities for improvement in the general travel advising profession, now is the time for individual travel advisors and the organizations they are affiliated with to acknowledge them. By this, I mean to admit any inherent shortcomings. It is the absolute first step to being well positioned to retake the travel sales and services throne.
Adapt – Here is where making adjustments come into play. The world is all of a sudden more digitally oriented than ever. It follows that even travel advising in the traditional sense must adjust to this reality. Therefore, the most pertinent question should be – which areas of travel advising are now perfect for digitization? Finding these areas, and adapting appropriately, will strike the right balance between the human connection and the digital. Travel advisors are best placed to deliver here.
Be proactive – In reality, the encouragement is to be more proactive than ever before. Focus these hyped-up actions on getting new customers by utilizing every available and reasonable means. But don’t forget about customer retention. It is also important for travel advisors to be proactive in keeping the customers they have.
Ultimately, it is time to realize that the new expectation for travel advisors will only be a reality if a concerted effort is made by travel advisors themselves. However, remember that this is not a comeback story. The profession of Travel advising was never dead. The outlook is just stronger than it has been in years.
