How Travel Agent Trade Group Fought Its Way Back From Near-Extinction
Photo Credit: American Society of Travel Advisors CEO Zane Kerby addressed the association's Advocacy Dinner August 22, 2018. Kerby has been instrumental in the association's comeback. flickr.com / American Society of Travel Advisors
Skift Take
These travel advisors have a certain swagger about them these days. Their U.S. trade association, the newly named American Society of Travel Advisors, is now back among the living, and has the challenge of keeping things moving in the right direction.
The recently renamed American Society of Travel Advisors went through a bleak decade-and-a-half when it kicked off the 21st century. After reducing commissions for a few years, U.S. airlines eliminated them for then-flight-dependent travel agents in 2002, and thousands of storefronts disappeared.
It didn't help their national trade association at all when travel agents realized the group couldn't do much to stem the bloodletting. Suppliers disengaged from the group, membership tanked, and attendance at ASTA's annual global conferences plummeted.
"They were running out of money, they were running out of members," said Marc Casto, president and CEO of San Jose, California-based Casto Travel, and a former ASTA board member. "It was a wonderful study in how to destroy a great association at that point."
For a look at ASTA's financials from 2011 to 2016, see the chart below.
He pointed to a characterization of the trade association's flagship convention about a half-dozen year
