Skift Take
Travel agents, sometimes called advisors, have seen many changes through the years, but the pandemic altered their profession in unimaginable ways. And that upheaval's not dying down anytime soon, with booking travel becoming more complicated and advisors seeing their roles as even more necessary.
Lynda Phillippi has ridden the ups and downs of travel many times during her 18-year career as a travel agent, and seen her profession go through just as many wrenching changes.
Then along came Covid. In a job that has been redefined countless times, through the rise of online travel booking sites, to mobile phones, to the collapse of storefront retail, Phillippi, an agent at Oregon-based agency Renaissance Travel, said the past two years have been like no others in how much her world has changed.
"What's shifted the most (in) post-pandemic travel — if we are even there yet — is how much more time it takes to plan, book, and get a trip successfully completed," said the 62-year-old Phillippi, who added she works the usual more than 40 hours a week, just in different ways. "We have to stay on top of destination requirements for vaccines and testing, and help clients arrange for those tests in many cases."
When travelers started preparing to ge
