It’s often the case that, as members of the travel media, we get the opportunity to spot interesting connections between different niche markets. While there are plenty of experts in specific aspects of travel — air, cruise, culinary, romance, etc. — they often have tunnel vision that prevents them from taking a wider view and looking across the entire industry.
For example, I recently had an opportunity to discover how two different industry groups approached a similar problem.
First, I attended the fourth-annual Family Travel Association (FTA) Summit in Bermuda. One of the topics brought up at the conference was Project Time Off, an initiative that encourages more Americans to use all the vacation days they are entitled to each year. As it is now, only about half of all working Americans use their yearly allotment of days. This failure to take vacations has been shown to be unhealthy for individuals and to have a negative impact on families.
Next, one of our editors attended the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) Summit in Italy. A major theme at the event was not just encouraging people to travel more, but to help them travel better. The goal of this approach is to create trips that provide transformational experiences without damaging our already fragile natural resources. One suggestion for achieving this is to encourage clients to take fewer but longer vacations — this provides them with more opportunities for powerful experiences, while mitigating some of the environmental damage caused by additional airline flights and overcrowding.
Although different, these issues are definitely related. After all, you can’t get people to travel smarter unless you get them to travel at all. And does it really help the world to have people visit an already crowded national park or theme park?
To me, a key element in both these scenarios is the travel advisor. A good agent can help craft vacations that are fun, easy and affordable, but still meaningful and environmentally-friendly. Inexperienced travelers can rely on the convenience offered by an advisor, while expert travelers can enhance their vacations with new ideas and recommendations.
It’s also notable that both the FTA and ATTA are working to include more travel advisor members. There seems to be a realization that agents can offer a level of expertise and advocacy that benefits everyone.
