Travel Advisors Can Be Part of Overtourism Solutions – Skift

Whether you are a home-based travel advisor or you work in a large office servicing high-profile accounts, the Travel Advisor Innovation Report will have you covered with the trends, news and features you’ll need to stay on top of an ever-changing marketplace.

Can you have too much of a good thing? It certainly does seem so for popular destinations, overwhelmed as they are by throngs of sightseers in endless lines to view iconic sites or crowds of passengers from mega cruise ships spilling into the streets. With predictions of a continuing boom in international travel over the next decade, the situation is only expected to get worse.

Our story looks at the role travel advisors can play in mitigating overtourism. By encouraging clients to visit lesser-known places or to travel during slower times of year, destinations stand to benefit. The real winners, however, may be the travelers themselves.

This week we also talked with veteran travel advisor Olga Ramudo of Express Travel, a highly successful agency that has served the Hispanic market for 30 years. Ramudo is an example of how community and industry involvement can elevate the impact a travel advisor can have.

For more coverage of pertinent issues, click here.

Any suggestions for the coverage you would like to see are welcome. Feel free to contact me at mbl@skift.com.

— Maria Lenhart, Travel Advisor Editor

Featured Stories

Overtourism Has Travel Advisors Telling Their Customers to Please Go Somewhere Else: While everyone has heard horror stories of overcrowded destinations, hostile locals, and lining up for hours for a glimpse of a tourist attraction, travel advisors are still faced with requests to visit the world’s most popular places. They have a dilemma: Do they make the booking or risk losing the business by recommending alternatives?

Travel Agency Serving Hispanics Advises Operators How to Woo Its Clients: Express Travel, a travel agency serving a largely Hispanic customer base, has built an extensive clientele over the past 30 years. Relationships, community involvement, and intimate awareness of how Hispanics like to travel have a lot to do with its success.

SeaWorld’s Rebound Appears to Be Sticking: The news has been consistently positive for SeaWorld lately after a long stretch of disappointing results. With new leadership and a strategy that has been working, 2019 is shaping up well.

Hotels

How a Performance Artist Is Helping a D.C. Hotel Be a Hub of Culture: It’s not unusual for hotels to talk about how they curate local culture into the experience. But a new hotel in Washington, D.C. is not just talking the talk, but walking the walk with this job.

IHG to Replicate Its Light-Touch Kimpton Approach With Six Senses: Let’s just hope, for everyone’s sake, IHG sticks to its word here and lets Six Senses be Six Senses.

Airlines

American Airlines Is Considering Flying to Africa and India With New Dreamliners: Since its merger with US Airways, American has taken a cautious approach with new routes. It has expanded to major Asian and South Pacific markets out of necessity but otherwise hasn’t taken too many chances. It is nice to see the airline considering adding India and Africa.

Delta and American Settle Claims Over Long Tarmac Delays: The Department of Transportation means well with its tarmac delay program. And it has been helpful for customers, who need not fear being trapped on planes for hours. These fines on the airlines are nothing, but the publicity is a reminder to try to do better.

Tourism

China Tourism Stall Leads to U.S. Drop in Foreign Visitor Spending: Even though official government data is still unavailable for 2018, reports show the United States is losing ground when it comes to international tourism — and especially in key markets like China. What will it take to turn that trend around?

Cars

Avis and Hertz Chart Their Futures After Yet Another Comeback: Car rental companies are looking to become transportation networking companies like Uber and Lyft, while also renting cars to drivers of those ridesharing services. But first, they need to bring their core business back on track.

Loyalty

Travel Loyalty Is Overdue for Disruption: Being a member in loyalty programs today is about as engaging as a trip to the auto mechanic. For most, complex rules and constraints take much of the utility out of the programs while other, more motivated travelers simply find them uninspiring. To survive, tomorrow’s loyalty programs will need much more than blockchain — they’ll need true disruption.

Skift Travel Advisor Editor Maria Lenhart [mbl@skift.com] curates the Skift Travel Advisor Innovation Report. Skift emails the newsletter every Tuesday. Have a story idea? Or a juicy news tip? Want to share a memo? Send her an email.

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