The International Airlines Travel Agent Network (IATAN) has adopted the American Society of Travel Advisors’ (ASTA) Verified Travel Advisor (VTA) certification as an officially recommended option within its agency accreditation process.
20.07.2024 - 00:19 / skift.com / Colin Nagy
Hotels are constantly changing and a great one can turn lackluster in the blink of an eye. Maybe it has a new GM or other personnel changes. Maybe the owners are facing financial pressure.
Does that hotel with a legendary reputation still offer a truly great experience? You’ll never know before you book if you’re relying only on chatbots and past reviews.
I give some travel advisors a hard time for acting entitled and expecting shrimp cocktails and a permanent red carpet. But the top tier continues to be very relevant. When they’re doing it right, they can be a source of truth: Regular sets of eyes and ears to see which properties are still up to snuff and which have gotten lazy.
One surprising development: Gen Z is starting to believe in this value as well. You wouldn’t think that a super digitally native generation, adept at double-clicking, would opt for third-party arbiters to book travel. But in a 2023 survey of 2,000 American travelers, 38% of Gen Z and Millennial respondents said they preferred a traditional travel agent over online booking.
Business Insider recently hypothesized that this trend is partly based on logistics. Gen Z travelers are good at finding locations by mainlining their Instagram and TikTok accounts, but then want to hand over the complexity of bookings to someone else. Social media can be the inspirational spark, but then there are the mundane aspects of travel like securing visas, deals and upgrades — all of which fall into the sweet spot of travel agents.
But BI missed the other key value of travel advisors: Objectivity and their role as BS detectors. Perhaps Gen Z understands the reality distortion fields of social media and wants a seasoned third party to verify if that location or hotel will live up to the hype. Perhaps the generation that is repulsed by excessive public-image making wants the fact-check that comes from boots-on-the-ground observations.
Or maybe they want to know how to hack the system, similar to knowing the bouncer at a club and being shown to the right table. Gen Z are hacking credit card points, finding loopholes and bugs in the system, and using technology as leverage. But there are some things you need human help for, and it is actually refreshing: specialized knowledge, the kind that is hard earned on the road, is still valuable.
Travel advisors can also play a role in finding the lesser known gems: the smaller boutiques and founder-led labors of love that don’t always have the big brand PR war chest and soft diplomacy.
For all the promise of large language models, they are ingesting a lot of the garbage created in the past 20 years from SEO-driven travel content and bad writing, then regurgitating it back to us with hallucinations and
The International Airlines Travel Agent Network (IATAN) has adopted the American Society of Travel Advisors’ (ASTA) Verified Travel Advisor (VTA) certification as an officially recommended option within its agency accreditation process.
Oceania Cruises is launching a new tool for travel advisors.
In conjunction with Make-A-Wish, Railbookers Group (RBG) a teen and her family to experience an overnight journey aboard Amtrak’s California Zephyr train traveling through the Rocky Mountains.
It's a new month, and new months always bring exciting new promotions and travel deals to enjoy! Check out our list of top travel deals, going on now through the end of August and September.
The St. Kitts Tourism Authority introduced the St. Kitts Yourway (SKY) Travel Agent Program, which offers advisors a slate of discounts and perks to enable them to explore the destination first-hand.
Whether it's down the street or across the country, moving can be a pain — and an expensive one. It's shocking how much good boxes cost, and that's not even touching the decor you'll purchase for your new place or the takeout food you'll order while your kitchen is packed.
Amtrak is celebrating fall early with a flash sale that has 30 percent off Flex fare tickets across the country.
Southwest Airlines is bringing back a few popular domestic routes to connect travelers to warm-weather destinations early next year.
Tourism is an important part of life in Alaska. In fact, last year, tourism brought in nearly $158 million in revenue for the state.
Planning and booking a fall or winter getaway just got cheaper. Southwest Airlines recently announced a new Wanna Get Away fare sale with airfares as low as $49 one-way to popular destinations. Best of all, travelers can snag discounted tickets to Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and other warm destinations throughout the winter. The fare sale ends on July 29, 2024 at 11:59 PM PST, and is valid on travel through January 29, 2025. The sale may be especially helpful for anyone planning a vacation to Hawaii, as inter-island travel is also discounted. Passengers can score $49 one-way flights from Honolulu International Airport to Hilo (Hawaii Island), Kahului (Maui), and Kona. Travel + Leisure spotted a variety of the $49 one-way fares available including:
As a kid who dreamed of being a professional artist, I spent hours at an abandoned dairy farm near my childhood home.
Any anxiety you might feel when you read the words self-driving holidays in Namibia evaporates almost the instant you arrive at the Explore Namibia offices in Windhoek. There are a lot of 4x4 vehicles being prepped, cleaned, safety checked and equipped for independent adventurers eager to discover this wonderful country for themselves.