Second in a series on the influx of new travel advisors in the industry. Check out part one here.
Justin Hinkle has spent more than a decade dreaming of owning his own business. Despite having an MBA, a Master of Science in Systems Engineering and a corporate job as a systems engineer for a ballistic missile defense system, he was searching for something more meaningful, something that put him in charge of his own destiny, something that better fit his personality. And something that incorporates his absolute favorite thing to do, travel.
It’s not just the act of actually going that Hinkle likes. He spends hours poring over spreadsheets comparing destinations and itineraries, reading guidebooks about the perfect way to navigate DisneyWorld, doing research for his family’s and his friends’ vacations. And he credits all that with laying the much-needed groundwork for his new career. Effective January 23, he is the full-time owner of Moonshot Travel in Colorado Springs.
“My wife always said I really needed to be a vacation planner,” Hinkle says. “It’s the planning and the pulling systems together to make a new system work that I love. And I look at it as being able to help people. The people I worked with were overwhelmed planning their vacations—but I’ve got spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of vacations I planned and never even went on. I was just doing it for fun.”
He is dismayed by the many posts he sees online from new travel advisors asking what even he considers to be elementary questions, he says. He himself got an MBA in Entrepreneurship in 2008, planning even then to run his own business one day. Then he spent the past eight months studying the industry, setting up an LLC, getting legal in place, choosing a host and taking “every last piece of Outside Agents internal training, then supplier training, now courses with Careers on Vacation with Cindi Williams, and next I will take courses and get my certification from the Travel Institute,” he says. While he has a website up, he is not yet marketing his services, but rather handling only friends and family to get his feet wet. He’s humbled by those who have been in the industry 30 years.
“I could sell travel today but just feel like there’s more I can learn,” he says. “I feel like in a few months I’ll be more set up, with all the processes and procedures, the customer workflow.”
But he does know his niche and his tag line, “Luxury Simplified,” for his target audience of professionals, hoping to “get them door to door without their having to worry about anything, feeling like they have been pampered without being flamboyant or elaborate.”
Being Prepared Is Not the Norm
As Hinkle pointed out, his path to preparedness is far from the norm for many in the industry. In a world of MLMs and host agencies, where many are eager to sign up new recruits with promises of free travel with no need for training before you get started, professional travel advisors have had enough.
“I’m very welcoming of newcomers, however they need experience,” says Loulu Lima of Book Here, Give Here Travel in Austin, TX. “All these MLMs are degrading the work we professionals do. By calling this a side hustle, promoting no fees, simple money, etc, they devalue the amazing work the rest of us are doing. I’ve stopped using the word agent/advisor to differentiate me from them. I’m a curator and a travel advocate. This isn’t just ‘Book a trip and earn money.’ We definitely need standards like many other fields that require licenses and education credits. This industry is not for the faint of heart. It takes years and sales to earn the qualifications to be selected into FAMs that are semi or fully hosted. And when you are invited, there is a required level of professionalism you must show.”
“I would love to see the US require licensing similar to Canada,” says Jeni Chaffer of Journeys Travel. “I am disappointed that ASTA did not make this a priority after 2020. It would paint advisors in a better light to consumers, elevate the industry and hopefully show the value in using agents that have decades of experience, training and knowledge. I have taken many Travel Institute courses, but being able to say you are certified is no longer a selling point when over 80,000 agents call themselves ‘certified’ after a 15-minute training session. Our industry needs to do better.”
“We really do need some form of actual certification,” agrees Suzanne Haire, aka TravelAgentSuz in The Villages, FL. “The card mills and MLMs are quickly ruining the reputation of the industry that actually has a lot of well read, talented people, who are extremely serious about being properly versed in the trade! For those who have been in the industry an extended amount of time – or have proven sales histories – maybe a test or even being grandfathered as excluded from this requirement…. However, for newly entering “agents,” an actual course of study through an accredited or valued travel industry partner and leader (such as IATA, CCRA or CLIA, or even ASTA) should be in place!”
“I hate seeing repeated posts about ‘I am a destination wedding specialist’ on the public forum and then seeing the same person in a travel agent forum asking how to do their first destination wedding… same goes for Disney specialists, Europe specialists who have never been to Europe, etc. I could go on and on about all of this. It is a sticking point for me for sure.”
“This is a hot button topic for me for sure,” agrees Elizabeth Henn at LBAC Travel in Sayville, NY. “I have been in this industry for over 25 years and I consider myself and my team to be travel professionals. However, until a day comes when there are mandatory licensing and certification programs required of all travel advisors, we are going to constantly have to fight for our designation as travel professionals and continually have to answer a question that always makes me cringe (as it’s never asked of a doctor, lawyer or other professional): Why use a travel agent?”
“I agree that there needs to be some sort of ‘clearance’ given to someone before they are allowed to call themselves a professional agent/advisor/consultant,” says Henry Dennis. “But the question is, who will be the ‘authority’ that is authorized to do so? And how many loopholes will the system create? Since there is no barrier to printing up cards and becoming a travel agent, we see more and more people in the industry that see is as an easy side hustle, a way to make some quick money and get free travel! Having some sort of testing/licensing/certification program that is a national standard would force those that want to be legit to invest the time to get the knowledge first…before they add to the perception that travel agents are not professional/knowledgeable and worth working with.”
Cheryl’s 40-year career in journalism is bookended by roles in the travel industry, including Executive Editor of Business Travel News in the 1990s, and recently, Editor in Chief of Travel Market Report and admin of Cheryl Rosen’s Group for Travel Professionals, a news and support group on Facebook. As an independent contractor since retiring from the 9-to-5 to travel more, she has written regular articles about the life and business of travel agents for Luxury Travel Advisor, Travel Agent, and Insider Travel Report. She also writes and edits for professional publications in the financial services, business, and technology sectors.