Become a Home Based Travel Agent

Looking Forward, by Looking Back
Mary Pat Sullivan, CTC

For 20 years, I have remained a committed evangelist for the professional travel agency community. As a long time reporter, editor, publisher, then Travel Institute executive and eventually consultant, I have stayed loyal to my belief that the supplier community gets a better consumer and a better bottom line profit working with a strong, professional travel agent.

In fact, my business over the last 7 years has been entirely based on helping suppliers grow and cultivate relationships with travel agents, helping them find the right ways to reach the best of the breed, helping them navigate the new business models, helping them to better understand today’s travel professional.

Well, one of my recent assignments was to manage the content development for Travel Weekly’s launch into the world of trade shows. And for me, and for many others, it seemed a bit of a watershed moment for our industry!

Yes, I had a strong vested interest in the success of the Travel Weekly Home Based Agent Show and Conference and CruiseWorld 2010. But it was not the work of the TW team or the speakers that wowed me. It was the audience.

I asked Tom and Joanie if I could write something for their newsletter. I haven’t written in a very long time, but something was just pulling at me. On behalf of an industry I truly love and have invested decades of my life in, I wanted to say thank you to those of you that came and shared your time, your insights and your passion for this business.

Standing around talking with suppliers and industry friends, everyone had the same feeling. We are all here to grow our business. Not just the suppliers, but the travel professionals in the room as well.

The attendees were a mix of long time agents and newer agents. They shared ideas. They learned from each other. There was a combination of seasoned travel pros, looking to master some new business skills and some seasoned business pros, looking to learn more about the travel industry in their newer second career as agents. And I am certain there was every model in between.

Our industry has become an appealing place to establish a career. We had very successful business people finding the same success or more in this industry. I spoke to so many who were happy with their day to day job, happy with their chosen profession and successful!

I hope it is time for pride and professionalism to rise to the top. For the profession of a travel consultant, agent… whatever you might tell your customers it is that you do… to be a career of choice.

For those of us who have been in it a long time, we know about the pains of change. We know about the shift in business models, we know about the economic rollercoaster. But for those of us still here, we also know about the passion for travel. The personal investment of self that many in this industry make to assure their customer’s happiness and to assure their personal and professional satisfaction.

I will continue to be the advocate for strong supplier relationships with professional travel agents. And thanks to those I met or really got to know in Fort Lauderdale, I will do it with more conviction than ever!