About five years ago, Alysha Klein, a television production executive, bought a Dream Vacations franchise. She liked her job but felt overwhelmed. A lifelong traveler, Klein was drawn to the industry.
Alysha Klein
Klein worked part-time on the new travel franchise, based in Coral Springs, Fla. Although it was tough during the pandemic, business has started to pick up in recent years. Last October, he left television and made the leap to operating his travel agency full time.
“I loved every moment of it,” Klein said.
Klein attributed a large part of his decision to being part of ASTA’s first Mentorship Program. Last year he asked on a whim after seeing an email, but the program — and his mentor, Jenn Lee, president of Travel Planners International’s new franchise venture, Vacation Planners — were motivating factors in making advising a career at the time. full
Klein is not alone. ASTA launched the program in 2023 and said it would double the number of mentor-mentee pairs this year.
While it is still small – there are 21 pairs for 2024 – the demand is high. Alvin Adriano, the Society’s director of industry affairs, said the program attracts hundreds of mentee applications. In its first year, 40 or 50 applied to be mentors, and 70-plus did so this year.
The mentorship program is part of an eight-step educational framework for counselors that the Society has honored in recent years.
That renewal, and other such initiatives around the industry, come at a time when consumer demand for advisors is at an all-time high, and new entrants into the industry are coming in droves.
The Travel Institute said the registration for his TripKit The introductory training course, which is designed for new advisers, has grown by 20% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period last year. Additionally, registrants for informational webinars new to the industry were up slightly to 2,948 in the first quarter of this year compared to 2,913 last year.
“We’ve had a lot of feedback from a variety of stakeholders, from our members to consortia to host agencies and more, to help build the business,” said Mark Meader, senior vice president for business at ASTA’s industry and education. “It is the defect that must be considered and repaired.”
Newer mentoring programs like ASTA’s join industry incumbents with a track record of success, such as Brownell’s (host agency in Birmingham, Ala.) mentoring program. No. 44 on Travel Weekly’s Power List).
The selective program, which has an acceptance rate of 2%, is currently running its 28th and 29th classes.
“Interest in our Mentoring Program continues to grow, as does the caliber of applicants,” said Kerry Dyer, Brownell’s chief development officer. The Class of 29 has three Ivy League graduates, two from Harvard Law School, he said.
Graduates of the program tend to see success. Dyer pointed out Christy Menzies of Menzies Luxury Retreats in Darien, Conn. To train the Wall Street executive, Menzies sold over $1 million in his mentoring year, and was awarded the Virtuoso Rising Star Award in 2023.
A new mentoring program from Prescription Travel Group is intended for interns from the University of Georgia hospitality program. The program is also supported by Prescription’s host agency, Montecito Village Travel.
Gayle Smith
Prescription’s previous success with travel tutors inspired the program: lead travel advisor Sam Johnson connected with CEO and founder Gayle Smith through her own internship, and despite having job opportunities in the travel sector the hotels, he chose to stay and make being a counselor a career.
The group modeled its new program, under the new Prescription Red and Black Travel division, off of Johnson’s internship. It started this January with 12 interns learning all about the career of travel advisors over the course of six months.
The internship is paid, and interns receive college credit and have the opportunity to sell travel in a supervised atmosphere.
“In this industry, you need to bring in new blood and the younger generation, the next generation,” Smith said.
Sam Johnson
“We’ve noticed that there’s a big niche in hospitality programs across the country that’s missing,” Johnson said. “There is a lot of focus on food industry management, hotel operations, event management, but there is not much focus on the travel and tourism sector, especially in the sales side”.
The exposure seems to be working: about half of Red and Black Travel’s interns have already expressed interest in having careers as travel advisors.
Such mentoring programs are considered important to help meet the growing demand for travel advisors.
According to Phocuswright’s US Travel Agency Landscape 2023, published in January, agency bookings will grow with “unprecedented growth” in 2022 and 2023.
And while Phocuswright found that the number of new advisers was driving that growth – more than a third of advisers surveyed for the report indicated that they have been selling trips for five years or less – the report also warns that a knowledge gap has not. it exists
“The influx of new advisers reflects the health of the market and the continued appeal of selling travel,” the report says. “However, the loss of the most experienced advisors of the market also means a lack of mentors to help newer advisors learn the business. As a result, training tools and opportunities are particularly important.”
