Zoom, ring lights, ergometer and food delivery. You can add travel advisors to the list of products and services that have found new life due to the pandemic.

Travel has become difficult due to virus-induced complexity, uncertainty, cancellations, delays, border restrictions, and testing requirements. As a result, many travelers who book a beach vacation or other trip turn to professionals to help them plan. Travel consultants – no longer travel agencies – are cool again.

“With the pandemic, our credibility and necessity are lost, and I think we are advocates now,” says Jennifer Wilson-Buttigieg, co-president of Valerie Wilson Travel, a New York-based travel and corporate travel agency that is a unit of Frosch International Travel. “Travel is possible. It’s just difficult. “

The middle seat

Scott McCartney looks at the ups and downs of air travel.

Do-it-yourself bookings and falling airline commissions caused travel agencies to shrink from the 1990s onwards. Survivors mostly booked cruises and lavish trips for customers interested in luxury accommodation and the big business of business travelers.

The industry has proven to be resilient, and now it’s hot. Travelers are dying to go anywhere after many have been on the ground for a year or more. And they have tons of questions about what you need to do to travel internationally and how to protect yourself from disappointment, delays and financial loss. More of them have turned to travel consultants.

A survey of leisure travelers this spring for the American Society of Travel Advisors and Sandals Resorts found that approximately 17% of travelers are likely to use a travel advisor for the first time when the pandemic is over.

In the online survey of 410 travelers, 44% said they were more likely to use a travel agent. Around 27% have already used consultants, so the difference lies in the first-time opportunity for consultants. (The survey margin of error was 4.8%.)

Avi Gilburt, a Maryland technical stock analyst and advisor, had started looking for a travel agent before the pandemic, but the crisis pushed him into the first-time visitor category. He and his wife traveled more and all the planning became too much for him.

“Covid was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he says.

Mr Gilburt and his wife continued to travel through the pandemic. That required a lot of changes and adjustments – carried out by travel advisor Angela Musso from Valerie Wilson Travel.

Using a travel advisor likely won’t get you the cheapest rates, says Mr Gilburt, but the lower hassle justified the extra cost.

And in a way, consultants can save money. One cancellation was for a $ 10,000 non-refundable booking at a 5-star hotel in the Caribbean. Ms. Musso used her connections to get Mr. Gilburt a refund.

Travel agents say their job has gotten more complex. You have to keep tracking Change boundary restrictions. You need to go through the Covid-19 restrictions on insurance policies. You need to have a Plan B for complicated events like destination weddings or family reunions when Plan A becomes impractical due to a virus outbreak. Plan C may also be required.

Just last week the The governor of Hawaii tried to dismiss it Vacationers and cut unnecessary trips because the delta variant of the Covid-19 virus made enough people sick to approach the islands’ limited hospital capacity.

“Let’s go again,” says Nancy Scorby of Scorby Travel & Cruise in St. Charles, Illinois. Hawaii was a destination that she had successfully sold. Now it probably means a new wave of cancellations and changes.

Like many companies, travel agencies have suffered badly from the pandemic. The consultants initially worked on bringing home customers who were stranded abroad in the chaos of the shutdown in March 2020. Then they took on the battle for customers to get refunds and usable credit for canceled trips. Holidays were rebooked and rebooked again.

With little new revenue coming in and even running out of some refunded fees, says Marc Casto, president of Leisure in the Americas for

Flight center travel group,

says he has had to make significant layoffs. Now he’s aggressively hiring again. At the beginning of the year, vaccination led to an increase in travel bookings.

“April was busy off the charts,” said Mr. Casto, who is based in Montvale, NJ and chairman of the ASTA board. Many were new customers, worried about all the risks and unknowns. In addition, there is uncertainty about what is actually open at different destinations for restaurants, museums, events and attractions and how to safely navigate using ground transportation.

“Whenever there is complexity, whenever there is uncertainty, whenever there are mysterious rules, there is even more benefit from the service,” says Mr. Casto.

Travel agents met for a convention in Chicago last week.


Photo:

STAY

ASTA held its annual convention in Chicago a week ago, and drew 550 travel agents, more than the 470 who popped up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2019. At each meeting, the number of representatives from airlines, hotels, cruise lines, tour companies, rental car agencies, and travel insurance companies outnumbered actual agents.

The mood, according to the participants, was euphoric – not only excited about the personal re-contact, but also spurred on by the sudden renaissance of the industry. There was even training for new travel consultants – people who started their careers during the pandemic when few were out.

“I think the appreciation for the job has changed,” said Zane Kerby, CEO of ASTA.

A big question that travel advisors are asking: what do they need to charge their customers now to make a profit when each trip takes more time to plan, book and track?

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Some agencies charged their clients fees; others relied solely on commissions. More agent training is now required. And when trips need to be rebooked, consultants can end up spending hours and hours on hold at airlines, Real estate landlords and others. “For a $ 40 service fee, that’s not good math,” says Kerby.

Kareem George, who runs a three-person agency called Culture Traveler in Franklin, Michigan, is now offering an annual fee of $ 2,500 per trip in addition to a fee structure of $ 100 to $ 500 per trip. He says more than 40% of his current customers are new to travel agents due to the pandemic.

Services that may now only be offered to the best customers may be mandatory, such as restaurant reservations or local transportation arrangements.

“Consumers are really getting it more than ever,” he says. “Now is truly an opportunity for those who were not previously charged to introduce fees.”

Intel for travel in 2021

Travel Consultants say they have added new strategies and practices to travel planning. Here are a few suggestions:

1) Stay in a country. No more tours through regions in several countries. You need to minimize border crossings and the associated testing requirements.

2) Knows where and when you will take your required Covid-19 test for re-entry into the US The test must meet certain requirements. Know how to get to the testing site, if you need to go anywhere, and how long the results will take.

3) Counting more attention to the issues on site. Do you need dinner reservations? What are local mask requirements? What is open and what is restricted? How do you get around if you are worried about buses and subways?

4) walk to an airport interview office if you need to renew your global entry but cannot get an appointment with Customs and Border Protection. Often times, officials can accommodate you due to no-shows and mixed-up appointments.

Write to Scott McCartney at Mittelitz@wsj.com

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