Timbuktu, Machu Picchu, Petra and Katmandu. Remember those exotic
places we used to send clients?
They are still there, and the travel industry is dead in the
water. The wind is out of our sails and the handwriting is on the
wall.
9/11, war, SARS, the economy and whatever else has brought the
travel industry to a screeching halt.
We, the dedicated, committed travel agent and tourism industry,
have to find a way to jump-start traveling again.
Remember the book “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Dr. Spencer Johnson?
It was a short story on being ready when the “cheese” is gone and
you have to move on to the next “cheese station.”
The more time it takes to get off your/our duff (hem and haw,
whine, wait for the government to bail us out) and make it happen,
the less cheese (money, mortgage, college funds) is left.
In layman’s terms ... someone throw us a dinghy!
As I sat by my pool in my remortgaged condo in Southern
California unemployed, or early retired you might call it, I think
and dream of ways to stimulate my personal 30-year tour-contracting
destiny.
So why not run it by all my colleagues in the same boat in the
travel industry? Airlines, hotels, tour operators, land operators,
cruise lines and Internet Web sites, you all need us.
In this standoff, however, we are all losing out and stuck at
“Cheese Station C.” If the airlines were willing to support us by
sending us (comp) to the farthest destinations on the planet, and
if the hotels supported us with (comp) rooms at those farthest
destinations, and the land operators supported us with (comp tour
options) at those destinations, we as travel agents, tour
directors, frontline people and the whole of the travel industry,
may just profit from the joint endeavor to prove that the planet is
now safe to move about.
All travel agents need to get out and on that airplane and stay
at that hotel and take those tours and cruises through the world’s
cities and countrysides. Let’s get the adventurers back to the
Himalayas, the exotic ruins of the world, the Spice Islands and
waiting in airline departure lounges worldwide.
We have a whole planet out there. I’ll take that travel
challenge any day, anywhere, anytime.