Military Veterans turned Entrepreneurs and Travel Advisors

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/321522

Travel Agencies Aren't Dying. They're Thriving -- Thanks in Part to Military Veterans.

If you thought travel agents were obsolete, you were right, to an extent. When sites like Travelocity and Expedia arrived in the mid-’90s, customers no longer needed their local brick-and-mortar agencies. And once airlines had a direct line to consumers, they stopped offering the commissions agents had long relied on. “The internet killed the old-fashioned travel agent,” says Dave Hershberger, chair of the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA). “It just took them all out of business.” 

Of the agents that survived, many found refuge in the exploding cruise industry. While customers approached airline tickets as a basic commodity, they looked at ship travel as an experience, and first-time cruise-goers needed all the help they could get sorting through itineraries, dining options and room choices. To win those customers, companies like Carnival and Royal Caribbean continued offering agent incentives. All of this functionally reshaped the travel agency industry as a whole. The old-time role of “agent” began to morph into “adviser.” And once that happened, the industry learned how to adapt and rebuild.