Arnie Weissmann
I wrote last week about ASTA's program designed to raise consumer trust in travel advisors through a combination of proven experience, minimum sales figures, completed regulatory and ethics coursework and commitment to an ethics pledge.
Shortly after the article was posted, I had a conversation in the back seat of a car heading north from Bogota, Colombia, that, along with an email I had just received, put the question of improving advisor professionalism into a different perspective for me.
Sitting next to me in the car, Juan Pablo Culasso described what it was like to be blind and travel as much as he does (he consults to ecolodges throughout South America to make their facilities accessible to the blind and also creates soundscapes for institutions).
"Airports are difficult," he said. "No two are the same. I'm heading to Brazil next month, and that means going through customs, picking up my bags and transferring to another terminal for a connection.
"It can be extremely stressful," he continued. "Assistance I've arranged may or may not show up. You double-check information, get to the gate and then the gate changes."
But with advancements in artificial intelligence, the experience has evolved significantly over just the past few months. "Now I can have my phone read the departure screens," he told me. "I can ask it, 'What gate am I in front of?'"
And when Culasso gets to his hotel room, he no longer needs someone to show him where everything is. "I just ask the phone, 'Do you see an outlet?' Or, 'Read me the prices on the minibar menu."
The email that I had received was from Jenn Lee, the president and chief marketing officer for both Travel Planners International and Vacation Planners, who was reacting to my column on professionalism.
She began, "For the past few months, I've wondered why we in the travel advisor community are still struggling to gain trust and professional recognition with consumers, even after everything that ASTA and CLIA and so many other industry partners have done to tout the value of a travel advisor in the travel-planning experience."
Like Culasso going through a new airport, Lee said she believes that consumers enter the travel-planning process unsure of what to expect.
"There's a lack of a consistent consumer experience when planning travel with an advisor," she wrote.
And unlike the improvements in technology that have made things easier for Culasso, Lee says she sees that things have only become more confusing for clients as time has gone by.
"The travel-planning 'expected experience' completely disappeared when brick-and-mortar agencies disappeared," she wrote. "There used to be an assumption of service and deliverables: Visit a travel agent's office, meet with an agent, look at gorgeous brochures, choose an itinerary, pull out your calendar, pick a date, hand over your credit card. The travel agent took care of the rest."
The diversity of advisor models is at the root of the confusion, she believes.
"Think about it: You meet 100 travel advisors and you see 100 different approaches to the travel-planning experience. It's no wonder there is no consistency or stickiness to the profession. Without these, the consumer will always be left wondering 'How does this work?'
"I honestly don't know the answer, given today's 100 different agency models. But I do know the questions: How can we collectively, as an industry, define, encourage and reward a minimum expectation from the travel advisor community? How do we craft and manage travel advisor counseling so we can begin establishing a consistent expected experience?
"Perhaps we should start with a basic level of required training and certification, and that there be consistency in professional tools utilized and in our terms and conditions. Perhaps also the same technology, the same training. And for agency groups, the same branding."
Emerging technologies hold a promise for Culasso that he'll have a more consistent airport experience going through even 100 different airports. Similarly, can 100 advisors following 100 different models share a level of consistency of experience that a consumer may find reassuring?
A tall order. The brick-and-mortar agent who offered a predictable course of travel planning for clients also tended to be a generalist. It was the trend toward differentiation that was, to a large extent, the saving grace for travel counseling as a profession. The move toward specialization and expertise has kept travel advisors competitive in the OTA/DIY era.
Are niche specialization and expertise compatible with an expected experience that's uniform? Or would a formatted approach to sales dampen entrepreneurial innovations?
It may come down to a pursuit of consistency within individual consortia, franchises and co-ops. A group like Lee's can, in fact, make a consistent travel-planning methodology its point of differentiation. With Lee's move into the presidency of TPI, it'll be interesting to see if she can shape her group's behavior to the level of expected experience that she believes is the key. After all, "planners" is literally TPI's middle name.