The MAST Travel Network's recent creation of MAST JV, a networking group for travel professionals under 40, is the latest move to address the shortage of "young blood" in retail travel sales.
The JV group will focus on education and career development along with networking. It will host exclusive networking hours at MAST events throughout the year, send out monthly newsletters and invite members on exclusive fam trips. Additional benefits will be offered to JV members who join ASTA. Agency membership with MAST is required to join the JV group.
"Within our membership, we definitely see more young travel professionals," said John Werner, MAST president and COO. "Agency owners and managers are looking for ways to connect with the Millennial generation. Through our efforts, MAST is helping them engage this generation."
Werner said 25 agents in the network have already joined JV and he expects another 20 will sign on.
That's good news. So too are organizations like ASTA's Young Professional Society (YPS), founded fourteen years ago to offer agents under 40 much the same benefits of the new MAST JV which, by the way, will work closely with ASTA and YPS.
Yet industry executives and observers continue to believe the agent community has a long way to go in attracting promising young talent to careers as travel agents.
Why is that exactly?
One might think a career selling travel would be immensely popular. It's almost a given now that everyone loves travel-even people who actually don't travel!
Travel has a glamorous aura about it-again, even for people who don't actually travel. And most people assume-rightly so, at least to some degree-that being a travel agent means you will, well, do quite a bit of traveling yourself.
Lean years in the retail industry, though, and countless articles on the decline of travel agents are a major part of the problem. Many in the consumer media reported that travel agents are irrelevant, or worse, "dead."
It's only relatively lately that there's been some serious pushback. The new view of agents as accomplished professional advisors is gaining traction, but long-held opinions die hard.
Add to that poor image the dearth of travel schools and retail travel sales curriculum in colleges and universities-all of which contribute to a lack of awareness of what agents do and even that they exist.
There's also the perception that agents don't make much money.
Jason Coleman, a vacation and cruise consultant in Los Angeles and a past president of ASTA's YPS, has said that recruiting young talent in an aging travel agent community continues to be a major issue for agencies who want to grow their staff.
Speaking at an industry conference two years ago, Coleman suggested that travel agencies that want to hire young talent recruit through local universities' study abroad program as well as community college practicum programs.
Coleman also had some advice for retaining young agents. The key to that, he said, is to let them do the job for which they were hired and not put them to work on the office tech help desk, say, or on social media efforts, areas many people automatically associate with Millennials.
It's also a great idea for agency owners and managers to mentor new hires "to death," encourage them to get involved in the travel industry and be open to their new ideas, Coleman said.
As for the money. Well, there are plenty of "million dollar agents" out there along with those agents who are managing to scrape by on a bit less than millions of dollars in sales. Just look at the consortia-and other-award programs that recognize the numerous top-selling agents.
It's a good idea to try and spread the word about those agents and successes more aggressively.
In fact, spreading the word about the real value of a career in travel, looks to be a positive byproduct of networking groups like the new MAST JV.
Just as word of mouth is an invaluable part of agents' business, it can also prove to play an invaluable role in recruiting new agents when MAST JV members, YPS members and other young agents spread the word that retail travel sales can be both a rewarding and profitable career choice.
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