<B> Agents Of Change Advance</B>
<I>Redoubling Recruitment Efforts</I>
By Sarah Welt
The traditional drought of good corporate travel agents--and the skyrocketing salaries they command--are reaching all-time highs on both sides of the Atlantic. To combat the problem, travel management companies are revamping their strategies, reworking their marketing schemes and coming up with innovative programs to train, retain and utilize their most important resource: the human interface with their customers.
Domestically, the problem of finding good agents at a low wage is exacerbated by the country's record low unemployment of 3 percent, the smallest graduating classes in recent history and an incredibly healthy economy. Some industry insiders also credit technology and the vision it holds out of automated booking products replacing agents as one reason for a drop-off in travel school enrollment. Others mention the commission cuts as reason for hesitation. Still others argue that potential agents are hesitant to enter the travel business because they do not see a viable career path past the entry level agent position.
Gary Anderson, president of the Springfield, N.J.-based Management Network, disagreed with the last point, arguing that "you can be a young person with three years experience" at a "fairly sophisticated job with a high school education and be making $35,000 a year. Can you think of another area where you can get that?"
Anderson said today in metro New York an agent makes about $40,000 compared with $30,000 five years ago. Jason King, president of Yours in Travel Personnel of New York said the going rate here is $45,000 but he's had corporations pay as high as $50,000 for an agent, whereas Boston's going rate is about $42,000.
In Europe, there are similar problems facing the travel agency community, said David Radcliffe, chief executive officer of Business Travel International and chief executive of Hogg Robinson plc in London. Radcliffe said clients are prepared to pay for quality service and the cost of agents has "certainly increased" in recent years and "rightly so. I am very pleased to see that as well because it gives value to the industry, which has turned from a relatively unskilled industry into a profession." However, finding a good pool of agents is challenging, so "some of my competitors are determined to move down the road of de-skilling" whereas BTI focuses on "re-skilling." Within the organization in Europe, Radcliffe recognizes the need to invest more in staff and "therefore we have in-house retraining programs designed to retrain" so that there is always "a pool of skilled labor available."
De-skilling has a role in call center environments and for certain elements of the business like simple point to point travel, said Radcliffe. A de-skilled workforce lends itself to point of sale technology, "allowing agents with less experience" to be on the front lines performing simpler transactions and at the same time freeing up "higher skilled people," thus "allowing us to redirect our skill to where we can enhance the value of the client," Radcliffe said.
Certain parts of the business have embraced the call center approach in order to do just that. Radcliffe said the company just opened a call center for hotel booking and foreign exchange currency service only in the last few weeks in Leicester with a staff of 100 to 150 people.
In the past year the company has introduced programs that encourage women who have had children to return to work with "flexitime" and is looking at the prospect of letting agents work from home.
The company also is incentivizing its agents. "A lot of agents are paid incentive packages which are linked to performance with specific accounts and we also have profit-related pay schemes where people share in the success of the company overall," he said.
As for education, Radcliffe said his organization has gone to universities in Europe to ask that "they change their syllabus to match the modern requirements of today's corporate travel," adding that there are not many courses available today that fit with today's requirements. Radcliffe would like to see courses in basic business operating skills, how to build business plans and negotiating skills. "Today's business travel consultants have to be able to operate in an IT environment at a higher level of numeracy," Radcliffe said.
Hogg Robinson's American counterparts also are working hard to fill the employment gap.
Rosenbluth International, for example, has launched an aggressive marketing strategy to recruit new employees. Vice president of human resources Cecily Carel said the reality is that a lot of people are not actively looking for job opportunities, so Rosenbluth, which used to spend a significant amount of money on advertising positions in newspapers, has been "going out and trolling for travel service associates." Rosenbluth performs informational interviews and tours for potential associates to "bolster loyalty and appreciation" in candidates. The company seeks to increase awareness about job opportunities at colleges and in the community. Still, Carel said finding experienced employees in metropolitan and rural areas where large res centers exist is difficult.
Making sure agents are trained properly is an important part of the retention process. The company has agents complete an eight week internal training course before moving to what it calls its Transition Learning Center to build agents' confidence before sending them to the front lines.
Carlson Wagonlit Travel owns a travel school in the United States and several in Europe, for students to be "trained by us on our own systems," said senior vice president of sales and marketing worldwide Liliana Frigerio. The company is in the midst of a major reengineering effort, tentatively called Project Mercury (<I>BTN</I>, April 13) which will create a unified front end to CRSs worldwide. "With Mercury up and running it will facilitate the training of personnel enormously," Frigerio said,
Properly training agents also is important to American Express, which in addition to its own intensive 10 week internal training and learning lab, has agreements with the Travel Education Center, based in Cambridge, Mass., and also recruits from other travel schools around the country.
Amex Corporate Services senior vice president Margaret Brownlee said agents go through competency training to ensure good customer service, and then a modular learning track. They are in the learning lab a minimum of four weeks to get up to speed in a phone environment.
Amex is placing emphasis on career growth through its learning track so "people can be upskilled in a lot of different areas," said Brownlee, noting that the next position would be onsite coordinator, supervising a small number of people, then moving to team leaders and then to the manager level. Brownlee said people can also move "from travel counselor to customer service reps located in our offices and then into our relationship area so they can become managers of account development and so forth." Additionally, the company is looking beyond its normal channels to recruit employees who may not have travel experience but test well in areas such as customer service and geography.
To retain employees, Amex six years ago implemented its Hearth program, allowing travel counselors to work from home. The program now has 150 counselors but "we are going to add another 300 by the end of the year," said Brownlee.
The agent shortage and high cost for talent is not just a mega problem. At Deluth, Ga.-based Travel Incorporated, the $270 million agency has implemented a huge productivity initiative with technology, increasing the speed of computers and upgrading telephony to create a virtual call center approach to maximize efficiencies of existing staff.
Vice president of operations Darrin Deck said the company has restructured to be more competitive on salary. "We lost people because a mega agency can afford to offer more" so now customers "bear the burden of salary" to remain competitive. As for recruiting, Deck has assembled a team to identify potential agent recruits.
Incentivizing Agents
In Cambridge, Omni Travel Services Inc. president Csilla Jacobson said Massachusetts has an overall record low rate of unemployment, which has "pushed a lot of agents to the extinction level because of too much stress and very low return." To combat this, Omni works diligently at retaining existing staff. Said Jacobson, "We can't change the industry but we can change the internal climate."
To that end, Omni offers agents performance-based compensation, giving them part of the revenues they generate. This has led to remarkable performance increases of 10 to 15 percent year over year. Since the commission cuts the company has been charging service fees, so there is an added expectation to perform high quality, efficient service.
While the agencies are the ones affected down the line by fewer entrants in the profession, travel schools and university programs have seen the drop off as well.
At the Travel Education Center in Cambridge, Mass., president and chief executive officer Linda Paresky has seen a significant fall in enrollment which began following the American Express purchase of Thomas Cook and the 1995 commission cap. In that year the school had 650 students, the next year it dropped to about 500 and this year it's back to 550. Paresky said, "Each one of the cuts creates an atmosphere of demoralization by the agency population" and it has been challenging to recruit new entrants since many students came by "word of mouth."
Paresky attributes the travel school enrollment shortfall to concerns about how both the Internet and ticketless travel will affect careers in the future.