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As cruise lines search for ways to appeal to younger guests, one item in the toolbox is the app, that downloadable software that makes a smartphone into more than just a device to make calls.
By one estimate, the average smartphone user has 41 apps installed on his or her device, used for everything from calculating tips to forecasting weather or playing games. Now cruise passengers are finding room on their screens for apps from the cruise lines.
Within the past two years, most of the large cruise lines have rolled out at least one app for customers. They generally fall into two categories. The first provides precruise information to help customers research their trip and check out shore excursion or ship info.
The second category is designed to help passengers once they embark by enhancing the onboard experience.
While it seems like they've been around forever, apps only really took off in the summer of 2008 when Apple opened its App Store shortly after introducing the iPhone in 2007.
Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that app downloads from the store had surpassed 100 billion since it opened.
WiFi access on cruises has led to shrinking of Internet cafes
Once the cutting edge of electronic sophistication, computer stations are now seeing less demand, so cruise lines are cutting back on them and redeploying the space. Read More
The rise of apps dovetailed with dramatically increased infrastructure spending by the cruise industry on Internet connectivity at sea and WiFi networks that enabled guests to use personal devices to access the Web onboard.
Because shipboard apps function by piggybacking on a WiFi network, it was only after onboard wireless services were upgraded and strengthened that they could reliably work.
Cruise lines offer their apps for free, and most are downloadable from the App Store for iPhones and iPads as well as from Google Play for Android-based devices. Some cruise lines charge a fee to use the app for chat communication, which is one of the most popular functions.
But unlike WiFi connectivity, which is an additional expense, apps are not seen by cruise lines as a profit generator. Rather, they are considered a service to help passengers make the onboard experience richer.
The Hub app can help Carnival Cruise Line passengers research their dining options while onboard as well as check in on any ship activities. When Carnival Cruise Line was developing its shipboard app, called Carnival Hub, it boiled the mission down to answering passenger needs at the most basic level, said Gaby Gonzalez, Carnival's vice president of guest technology and photo operations.
"If you look back at what the app was meant to solve, there were two main questions: 'What can I do now?' and 'Where's Sally?'" Gonzalez said. So Carnival paid close attention to functions that displayed daily activities on its ships and also provided person-to-person messaging.
Gonzalez said passengers have been pleased with the results, measured by positive reviews that Carnival Hub garnered in the app stores, with users rating it at 4.5 out of five stars. She said about a third of the passengers on ships outfitted for Hub use it.
The idea of the Hub [is] how do you maximize the fun of the cruise experience?" Gonzalez said. "How do you make being on a cruise better because you now have your gateway, your hub to that experience?"
Although it's very functional, Carnival Hub is currently available on only four ships, the Breeze, Dream, Magic and Sunshine, although the line said the plan is for it to be available on all ships by the end of 2016. Royal Caribbean International's Royal IQ app is offered only on its Quantum-class ships, and some lines don't offer an app.
In general, small-ship cruise lines are less likely to invest in a shipboard app.
"If you look at our fleet, which is made up of smaller, more intimate ships and where a majority of them carry 700 passengers or less, it's kind of hard to get lost while onboard," said Jason Lasecki, spokesman for Regent Seven Seas Cruises and Oceania Cruises, neither of which offers an app.
The Royal Caribbean app, available on Quantum-class ships, displays events on the daily Cruise Compass. One of the few lines to make its app available fleetwide is Princess Cruises, in part because Princess@Sea is a website accessible through a browser rather than a downloadable program. That approach made it easier to implement, and it is accessible on laptops, at terminals in the ship's Internet cafe and for devices other than mobile phones and tablets.
Development of Princess@Sea started early in the winter of 2012 and was timed to launch with the debut of the Royal Princess in 2013, said Nate Craddock, the project lead for guest experience applications at Princess Cruises.
A look at how Princess@Sea functions demonstrates the variety of features that shipboard apps include. The landing page is mostly about events and schedules: times for movies, happy hours, contests and the like. There is some basic weather information for the day and a quartet of buttons at the bottom that lead to other pages with more information.
The events button, for example, takes passengers to a listing of all happenings during the cruise (events for the current day are displayed on the landing page). Users can touch or click on an event link to add it to a personalized agenda called My Cruise Planner.
An Internet button connects to the passenger's Web account (using Princess@Sea itself does not incur Internet charges).
A Messenger button initiates the chat function. Each user of Princess@Sea has a unique identification number. Users who want to chat with each other exchange these numbers. Group chats are also possible.
The More button is a gateway to a variety of extra functions. Like most shipboard apps, Princess@Sea has a stateroom account page where passengers can view an itemized list of what they've spent.
Another page leads to information about bars, restaurants, lounges and the casino. For example, the Adagio Bar page lists hours, displays a menu, has a photo gallery and includes a descriptive paragraph.
A Map It button brings up a deck plan for any location being researched.
The More tab is also where passengers can go deep into the ship's itinerary. Clicking on a port of call brings up arrival and departure info, a brief description and photos.
A page on Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for example, includes a selection of restaurants that offer authentic local cuisine, fun facts and how to take part in a sea turtle protection program. There's information on the port's ties to Hollywood, tropical birds that are native to the area and a bar where guests can enter and exit on a burro. Another area has other information guests need about where they are docked, proper attire, nearby beaches, shopping, tipping customs, banks and post office locations and emergency numbers.
A general-information page contains a variety of useful items typically found in the loose-leaf binders on the desk of a passenger cabin, things like communications and stateroom services and safety and environmental reminders. There's even a security section that lists phone numbers for the FBI, Coast Guard and a national sexual-assault hotline.
To help passengers who may not be digitally savvy, Princess has trained staff members who interact with guests to walk them through any problems they have with the app, Craddock said.
Princess guests can request a reference sheet from guest services or at the Internet cafe front desk. Cruise directors include a brief Princess@Sea how-to in the daily Wake show, and commercials for the app run during gaps in programming on the in-cabin TV system.
Although the Princess@Sea website has some features common to many cruise line apps, each line has its own approach. Here's a look at what some other lines offer.
Carnival Cruise Line
In addition to person-to-person chat, which costs $5 per person, per voyage, Carnival Hub is popular with small groups because it enables joint chats.
"When people are traveling in groups of 20 or so, we actually prepopulate the contacts list that enables that connectivity," Gonzalez said. "If you arrive together in a group of 20, you'll already see in your contact list the 20 people."
For 2016, Carnival is focusing on two things. The first is expanding Hub fleetwide; Gonzalez said her goal is to have that accomplished by the end of the year. The second is to add the ability for passengers to use the app to download and buy shipboard photos.
Celebrity Cruises focused its app on cruise planning rather than on listing onboard activities. Celebrity Cruises
Celebrity has focused its Celebrity Destinations app on cruise planning rather than on shipboard activities. Its app offers videos and rich imagery of the ports Celebrity visits, itineraries and maps of Celebrity tours, profiles of the line's shore excursions, interactive deck plans and other planning aids. Celebrity also has a separate Cruise Lingo app that translates useful phrases on a customer's phone into a variety of languages.
Costa
The Italian line's MyCostaMobile includes a 360-degree tour feature for each ship and offers free text messaging or phone service to connect with other passengers on the ship using a mobile device.
Crystal Cruises has the Storyteller as part of its app, enabling passengers to edit their photos. Crystal Cruises
Crystal's three offerings are not conventional shipboard apps. One, called the Storyteller, is a photo-editing app. Users store or share photos via Facebook or email and can create postcards from them. While using the app to edit photos is free, an Internet package is required to share photos in social media.
Crystal also has a media-player app for watching movies and Crystal-produced programming as well as enrichment lectures, while the PressReader by Newspaper Direct app lets users read U.S. and international newspapers for free while onboard.
Cunard
Carnival Corp.'s staunchly traditional Cunard Line has two mobile apps available in the App Store: one displays Cunard U.K. brochures, and the other houses the onboard magazines.
The Disney Navigator is available for use on every ship in the fleet. Among its features is a complimentary chat function. It also identifies where character interactions can be found onboard. Disney Cruise Line
Along with Princess, Disney Cruise Line is one of the few lines where apps function fleetwide. Its Navigator is similar to Princess@Sea, plus it has times and locations for children's character interactions, as well as a drink-of-the-day description for adults. Disney includes a complimentary chat function. The chat does not work on Disney's Castaway Cay private island, but passengers can view maps of the Cay on the app.
Holland America Line
HAL has an app optimized for tablets that describes its Alaska cruise offerings. Users can explore both cruises and Land+Sea Journeys with a new level of detail, including an interactive map with destination details and excursion options as well as a sampling of the line's Glacier Bay podcasts.
MSC Cruises’ app enables its passengers to book restaurants and shore excursions through its app along with keeping track of where the ship is heading. MSC Cruises
Once onboard, guests can download the MSC Traveler app to "friend" and chat with other passengers in real time. The app also enables guests to book restaurant and shore excursions, view sea conditions and weather forecasts for ports of call, check out daily activities and special events, update their location and keep up to date on global news. The app is available on a limited number of ships including the MSC Divina, Magnifica and Preziosa.
Norwegian Cruise Line’s iConcierge app enables a guest to make calls to people off the ship, and an intraship chat is available for a fee. It’s available on 11 of the line’s 14 vessels. Norwegian Cruise Line
The iConcierge app has functionality similar to the Princess@Sea website. An additional feature is the ability to make calls to and receive calls from people who are not on the ship, though additional charges apply on a per-minute basis. An intraship chat feature is priced at $7.95 per person, per voyage. The app is available on 11 of Norwegian's 14 ships. Royal Caribbean International
The debut of the Quantum of the Seas also marked the debut of the Royal IQ app.
One feature unique to Royal IQ is the ability to track luggage through the embarkation and debarkation processes, using radio-frequency identification tags. Royal's app provides for ship-to-shore and shore-to-ship calls billed at a per-minute rate. The app is featured on Quantum-class ships, including the Anthem of the Seas.
• • •
Cruise ship apps continue to be a work in progress, with lines cooking up new functions and versions. A spokeswoman for Norwegian, for example, said last month the line was working on enhancements but as of press time was not ready to talk about it.
Princess said probable improvements to Princess@Sea include the ability to redeem prepurchased gifts, a preview function for prepurchased shore excursions, a ratings and reviews section for alternative dining rooms and more collaborative tools for groups and charters.
At Carnival, there's plenty of excitement about the upcoming debut of photo downloading and purchases through the Carnival Hub app on the Carnival Vista, which will launch in May.
"You'll be able to view the photos that the photographers took of you, and you can buy them right on the app," Gonzalez said. "This is going to be a fully digital gallery, and you'll be able to download it on your phone, buy it on your phone and walk away with it."
Also on the radar at Carnival in the next few years, Gonzalez said, will be the ability to use the app to buy shore excursions. "We have a pretty rich road map ahead so that we can facilitate the cruise vacation even more," she said.
ChatSim is a SIM card that offers users the ability to message on certain apps for a baseline price of $12 per year.
An Expedia.com study recently revealed what most suspected: The majority of travelers consider their smartphones to be the most important item to bring on trips. But signing up for and using overseas calling plans offered by U.S. wireless companies are among the most frustrating, and among the most expensive, experiences consumers encounter in their journeys.
Travel advisers have taken note: The importance of keeping their clients connected internationally has not escaped them, and many are now offering more convenient options for staying connected, including applications that enable cheap international calling via WiFi, in an attempt to combat the historically expensive and confusing international plans offered by most domestic carriers.
T-Mobile is now including in some of its simple choice plans international roaming in about 140 countries with unlimited data and texts. The plans start at $50 per line per month. WiFi calls made back home to the U.S. are free, but WiFi calls to another country are 20 cents per minute, the same rate as cellular calls.
Other carriers have more complicated — and more expensive — ways to make international calls. For example, AT&T offers a three-tiered plan for coverage in some 190 countries with base charges of $30, $60 and $120. Each includes unlimited texting, but depending on the base plan, a user could pay as much as $1 per minute for calls and more for data.
In contrast, Wireless Traveler offers several popular solutions that travel advisers can share with their clients. In addition to renting and selling global phones, the company has an eponymous app that offers international calling for as low as 2 cents per minute over WiFi. It is a voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) service that is available wherever there is WiFi.
Rates vary by country, but for example, a traveler in France could call another country from the app for 3 cents per minute. Calling another person who has the app is free.
The company also offers a white-label version of the product, working with agencies and tour operators such as Valerie Wilson Travel and Collette Tours to create branded apps that offer the same calling technology. Wireless Traveler also has preferred-supplier relationships with Virtuoso, Ensemble Travel Group and others, according to CEO Ian Benson.
Valerie Wilson Travel Co-President Kimberly Wilson Wetty said she uses her company’s branded app when she travels and is impressed with the quality of the service for the price.
“It is the cheapest thing I have ever used as a service,” she said, calling the quality “so clear it was unbelievable.” Her agency promotes the app to its clients, including leisure and corporate travelers.
Wetty particularly likes that the app carries her agency’s name and logo, keeping it in the forefront of clients’ minds.
“As an agency owner, that’s one of the concerns as we look at the increased advancement of travel technology,” she said. “How do you maintain your own brand and your own relevance in a world where there’s information 24/7 and completely at your fingertips?”
Elaine Carey, an affiliate of Travel Experts, uses the app as a gift that she gives to some of her younger, more tech-savvy clients. Before they travel abroad, she pre-loads an app with $20 for them. It also provides them with a good — and free, for them — way to get in touch with her if something goes wrong on their trip, she said.
Benson said that while some agents do gift within the app, “not enough [do] in my opinion. … I think it’s a fabulous gift to give to somebody because it’s so relevant.”
Nicole Mazza, chief marketing officer of Travelsavers and NEST, said the companies encourage their agents to gift WiFi calling credit within their Affluent Traveler Talk App. Many use it as a value-add for their clients.
In addition to the Wireless Traveler app, the company offers global SIM cards, which Benson said are his biggest sellers. They work in most countries in the world through partnerships with some 400 carriers. The card costs $24.99, with $15 of free airtime included; it also includes a U.S. and European phone number.
Rates vary, but for example outgoing calls from France to the U.K. have a 40-cent connection fee and are 65 cents per minute. Text messages and data are available at additional per-country costs.
Like the Wireless Traveler app, Benson said there are agents who gift global SIM cards to clients, as well as the company’s pocket WiFi hotspots.
It is important to note that Wireless Traveler’s global SIM cards only work on unlocked GSM cell phones, meaning they will not work with Verizon handsets.
Travelers could, of course, purchase local SIM cards if they have a compatible phone once they reach their destination, but Benson said
he only recommends that for longer stays because it eats into vacation time, and the local cards cannot travel from country to country. They also expire after a set amount of time, while the global SIM card does not.
ChatSim, another relatively new international telecom service, is making its way into the U.S., and its investors are hoping agents here will start using the technology themselves and gifting it to clients, as the company is seeing internationally.
ChatSim is a SIM card that offers users the ability to message on certain apps for a baseline price of $12 per year. The card itself is also about $12, but it does not expire at the end of the year.
ChatSim works on messaging apps WhatsApp, Messenger, LINE, WeChat, imo, Kakao Talk, QQi, Hike and BBM. It provides coverage in 150 countries by connecting to over 250 service providers.
Pierre Brais, an angel investor in ChatSim, said the company differentiates itself from others thanks to its flat annual $12 fee to chat within compatible apps. The card can be ordered online through Amazon for $25, which includes the card and the first year’s $12 fee.
For an extra $12, users can buy a multimedia package of 2,000 credits, which they can use to send photos and make voice calls within apps. ChatSim estimates 2,000 credits would give a user enough bandwidth to send up to 200 photos or 50 videos or make up to 80 minutes of voice calls. Brais said around 60% to 70% of people buying the card are also buying the multimedia option.
Costs are kept down by preventing other apps on a user’s phone from running in the background, eating up data, according to Brais.
“Our tests have shown that 90% of data traffic on a smartphone now is used by the background applications on your phone,” he said, not by what the user is actually doing. The ChatSim card automatically turns off non-messaging apps to limit the amount of data used.
ChatSim has been on the market for about a year, and 100,000 cards have been sold, including to travel agents and tour operators, who are gifting the cards or selling them to clients.
The company attended the recent New York Times Travel Show and got a positive reaction from agents, Brais said, marking the start of ChatSim’s push into the U.S. market.
Brais said the card works in most unlocked, SIM-capable phones, both GSM and CDMA, meaning that unlike Wireless Traveler’s SIM cards the CDMA version of ChatSIM will work with Verizon handsets.
Smartphone the most essential travel item, survey finds
Worldwide, smartphones are travelers’ most indispensable items when they travel, even ahead of their toothbrush and driver’s license, according to the Expedia/Egencia Mobile Index.
The index, commissioned by Expedia.com and Egencia (Expedia’s business travel brand), was conducted by consulting firm It was based on input from 9,642 travelers from 19 countries.
Among U.S. respondents, one-fifth considered their smartphone to be their most essential travel item, on par with the number of respondents who said their driver’s license was the most important item to travel with. In the United States, those items tied for the most essential item for travelers.
Worldwide, 66% of respondents said smartphones are the most essential item, while 74% considered it an important travel item.
China, Taiwan and Thailand topped the charts on the countries where respondents placed the most priority on having smartphones while traveling; in China, 94% of respondents said they consider their mobile phone an important travel companion. Taiwan saw the same percentage, and in Thailand, it was 91%.
The study also found that worldwide, 84% of travelers said they want to access information from anywhere. Over half, 60%, said they do not “unplug” on leisure trips, and 35% said they use their smartphones more on vacation than at home.
Globally, 60% of travelers said they wouldn’t go on vacation without a mobile phone, and 63% sleep with their phone next to their bed on vacation.
“We have found that travelers are using mobile devices at every stage of the travel process, from researching and booking trips to capturing and sharing the travel experience,” said Aman Bhutani, president of Brand Expedia Group.
Norwegian Cruise Line’s ace sales instructor Bob Becker was onboard the Norwegian Escape’s preview cruise in early November. Becker, whose official title is senior vice president of consumer research, gave a well-attended talk to agents in the ship’s main theater.
Becker made many of the points he’s made in past sales presentations, but if you’ve never heard them it can be an inspirational hour or so. Here are a few of the pointers from the Norwegian Escape session:
• Help people buy what they need, not what they want, Becker advised. What they want is availability and a price quote. An agent can do a better job of sniffing out what they need than an OTA.
• “Have I ever been in your bedroom?” is a question Becker said he asks of customers who want an inside cabin. “I bet it has a window. So why go on vacation and stay in a closet?”
• Another bit of advice for agents is to do business on the phone or face to face, not over the Internet.
“There are no relationships in email,” Becker said. When he gets an email inquiry, Becker said he sends back a form letter asking the prospect to call him to discuss his vacation.
“If they don’t call back, bye-bye,” said Becker, adding that long back-and-forth email exchanges can be one of the biggest hidden time-wasters for agents.
• Social media can also fall into that category, Becker said. “Don’t let Facebook screw up your day.”
Becker said that an agent’s information technology time should be reserved first for a customer relationship management system, then email, and only after that for Instagram and Facebook.
“Social media is ‘in addition to,’ not ‘instead of,’” said Becker.
• Another Becker gem is to find the customer’s hot spot, something that can be used to your advantage in crafting a custom solution for that client. “Who will be joining you on this vacation?” is one of his favorite questions.
Knowing whether a cruise is intended to be a multigenerational family trip or a romantic getaway for two is the first step toward picking a line, ship and cabin for that customer.
Follow up with questions about the names and ages of the customer’s travel party, he recommended. “If they tell you their kids’ names and ages, they already trust you enough to give you their credit card.”
Get away from it all? Cruise passengers want MORE intrusion from the outside world with free wifi the innovation they'd most like to see on ships (...it can cost £20 an hour)
Poll of 1,000 passengers found demand for internet access was top
But logging on can prove costly...and the signal can struggle at sea
Experts say younger travellers like to share holidays on social media
By TOM KELLY FOR THE DAILY MAIL
With their on-board entertainment and air of relaxed seclusion, cruise liners seem the ideal place to get away from it all.
But it appears that what holidaymakers really want is more intrusion from the outside world.
Almost nine in ten passengers said free wifi and email access is the innovation they would most like to see on cruise ships, a poll found.
Get connected: nine in ten passengers said free wifi and email access is the innovation they would most like to see on cruise ships
With many now including smartphones and tablets in their luggage, travellers increasingly expect to be able to browse the internet even when far from land. And while many liners try to accommodate their demands with wifi hotspots, logging on can prove costly at up to £20 an hour.
There are also problems with repeated signal interruptions and slow service. ‘This is a particularly prevalent issue for younger families,’ said Sukie Rapal of Cruise.co.uk, which carried out the poll of 1,000 passengers.
‘Teenagers use their devices to stay in touch with friends on social media, access mobile applications and play games – meaning cruisers are susceptible to receiving a very unexpected cost at the end of their trip.’
The demand for better internet access is partly down to the falling average age of passengers, which the survey found has dropped from 60 to 55 years in the last decade.
‘With a 195 per cent rise in the number of searches for cruises on mobile devices this Christmas, it’s apparent that cruisers have become more tech savvy,’ she added.
‘Cruisers need to do their research to find the most reasonable rates for wifi use, because if they fail to do so, it could end up costing them more than the holiday itself.’
Get away from it all? No thanks: Many travellers increasingly expect to be able to browse the internet even when far from land
The poll also showed that world class entertainment came high up on cruisers’ wishlists, while around a fifth said their biggest demand was flat screen televisions in their cabins.
The least desired innovation was robot barmen, which have already been installed on a Royal Caribbean ship. Just one per cent said they were interested in seeing these on board.
The most popular ocean destination for this year is the Far East, while Europe’s Danube is the preferred river trip.
Carnival introduces Internet plans based on type of usage
Carnival Cruise Line is testing a new method of delivering Internet service to guests, giving them a choice of three packages based on their online activities instead of charging guests for minutes used.
Carnival is piloting the new Internet packages on three ships: the Freedom, Sunshine and Breeze.
The least expensive option is the social media package, which enables guests to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest for a flat fee of $5 per day or $25 per voyage during the initial testing period.
Those who want to check email and surf the Web can upgrade to a value package for $16 per day or $60 per cruise.
A premium package provides “the fastest available connection speed,” said Carnival, and is for heavy Internet usage. Those who want to use the Skype video calling application must buy the premium package. It costs $25 per day or $99 per cruise.
Guests do not have to log on or off while their plan lasts.
On Carnival’s other ships, the cruise line charges $29 for 45 minutes, $59 for 120 minutes, $89 for 240 minutes and $159 for 480 minutes.
Also, the cruise line is piloting a free smartphone app on the Carnival Breeze. The app provides a searchable deck plan, information about restaurants, the guest’s Sail & Sign account balance, itinerary details and a schedule of shipboard events.
A chat feature that costs $5 for the entire cruise enables guests to exchange messages with traveling companions.
The mobile app and new Internet packages will roll out to additional ships following successful completion of pilot programs, Carnival said.
There's so much exciting things coming for guests to experience on Quantum of the Seas but there is a really big chance coming on Quantum of the Seas that benefits the people that make Quantum of the Seas function.
Royal Caribbean is rewarding each crew member on Quantum of the Seas with a free, personal Microsoft Windows 8.1 tablet with a suite of services and apps that is theirs to keep.
In fact, as the technology upgrades make their way across Royal Caribbean's fleet, every shipboard employee will get their own free Windows tablet. In total, Royal Caribbean will give out 40,000 tablets.
All of this ensures crew members will stay connected with friends and family as well as have an opportunity to have one of the best technology options out there.
The tablets are 8-inch Windows-based tablets built by HEXA special for Royal Caribbean.
The tablets will feature services such as Bing, Skype, Office 365 and OneDrive. Rollout will begin in October and is expected to be completed by the end of December with every shipboard employee in the Royal Caribbean fleet receiving a tablet.
Young agents organize to reinvent travel retail for millennial age
By Kate RiceAS
After years of industry hand-wringing over the graying of travel agents, young travel professionals are taking it upon themselves to recruit more of their own into an industry that one young organizer recently called “sexy.”
In recent months, young travel professionals have formed a handful of industry groups — significantly, none exclusively for travel agents. They hold virtual as well as actual cocktail parties. They communicate as much by Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as by email.
And when they hold an event, be it a website launch party or a regularly scheduled monthly meet-up, the venue is packed. Their goal is to spread the word about travel careers to a generation that grew up in an online world.
“I never knew anyone who used a travel agent,” said Karen Magee, 26, a member of the board of New York-based Young Travel Professionals and manager of hotel sales and marketing for Ultramar Travel Management in lower Manhattan.
At present, three distinct groups have been formed, though at the 30,000-foot level, they have similar goals: Each is targeting young travel professionals, and each wants to attract new, young talent to a “fun, exciting, sexy industry,” in Magee’s words.
And they’re getting a response.
California-based Millennials in Travel budgeted for 60 people to attend their launch party in Los Angeles last month and attracted more than 100, said Joshua Smith, Millennials’ director of strategic development and independent journeys manager for Travcoa.
Before the group even held the event, he got email queries from peers in Miami and Chicago interested in starting their own chapters.
“I think it’s great,” 36-year-old Ryan McGredy, president of ASTA’s Young Professionals Society (YPS) and president of Moraga Travel in Moraga, Calif., said of the mushrooming number of groups for young people in the travel industry. “It means that there are enough of us out there now to have some different ideas about how these groups can run.”
Most of the differences between the groups lie in their membership requirements and focus.
ASTA’s youth chapter
ASTA’s YPS, the most senior of the three groups, celebrated its 10th anniversary last year. But in the past year, it has undergone some radical changes.
Last summer, it morphed from committee status to a full-fledged chapter, becoming ASTA’s first chapter to not be based on geography.
“We were coming up with events, fund-raising, doing all the things that a chapter board does but without the power of a chapter,” McGredy said.
A classic example of a young travel pro, McGredy came to travel from the tech industry, finding travel, fun, interesting, challenging and lucrative. “It’s a great business to be in,” he said. “You can make a lot of money doing it.”
Getting the word out that being a travel agent is an attractive career is one big goal, he said, as are training and networking.
Joining forces is important, he said.
“We can benefit from each other, and not just networking-wise,” McGredy said. “We are such a heavily regulated industry [that] it’s important for us to start understanding advocacy.”
Noting that federal, state, county and local governments all regulate travel, he said, “It can affect us, from making our jobs harder to raising our costs of doing business to cutting our margins.”
For example, he pointed to sequestration as a federal budget issue that could have a constraining impact on travel. A Members-Only Day in Washington last November saw YPS members going around the capital to talk to high-ranking staffers of their representatives on Capitol Hill and meeting with legislative analysts.
“People came out saying, ‘Wow, I didn’t even know that you could do this, that people care about what you say,’” McGredy recalled recently.
At the same time, YPS is addressing a gap that McGredy saw when he first entered the travel business, between the old guard’s way of doing business and young turks coming in and reinventing the wheel.
He wanted to find a way for young industry entrants to connect with their peers and also connect with the legacy of the travel industry, and he sees YPS as a way to accomplish that.
Senior members of ASTA last year voiced strong support for YPS’ efforts to become a full-fledged chapter.
Because YPS is part of ASTA, it is focused on agents, but it is not limited to agents. McGredy stressed that suppliers are just as active in the group.
Membership in YPS is currently about 400, but it changes as new members enter and as older members “age out” at 40. The only limitation on suppliers is that they cannot attend the group’s retreats, which YPS calls its “fams.” That’s because retreat sponsors want agents who will sell their destination or product on these trips.
The group says it plans to play a larger role at ASTA’s Travel Retailing and Destination Expo in Miami in September.
Young Travel Professionals
Magee said that Young Travel Professionals, a group based in New York, has three goals.
The first is relationship building. To that end, the group holds monthly events at hotels or bars as well as special events such as their website launch party in February. It has 800 members and averages about 100 attendees at its monthly get-togethers.
The second goal is career development, helping people network to find new jobs. It also encourages members to post new jobs on its Facebook and LinkedIn pages.
Allison Davis, 24, social media manager for YTP and social media coordinator of marketing for Ultramar Travel Management, said she got a job thanks to one such posting, and her involvement in YTP is attractive to employers because she’s connected to a talent pool of young people enthusiastic about the industry.
The third goal is to bring new blood to the industry. Magee said that event attendees include people from other fields such as finance and media. The group is planning a mentoring program and ultimately plans to expand to other cities.
YTP is hospitality-focused but defines hospitality very broadly. Its members include hotels, restaurants, meetings and event planners, airlines, other transportation providers, operators, agencies, online travel agencies and deal sites such as Jetsetter. It has no age requirements. Millennials in Travel
The main goal of Millennials in Travel is career development, Smith said. It is looking at a mentorship program that pairs young professionals with one or two years in the industry with more experienced, five- or 10-year veterans.
Millennials is targeting colleges and universities to show students the value of a travel career. It’s creating a jobs board and has already seen one person change careers thanks to one such posting. Its membership is open to those born between 1979 and 2000.
“That is the millennial generation,” said Smith, who adds this group is differentiated from previous generations by the acceleration of technology and by the rise of a global economy.
It will hold elections to its board every two years and has an advisory board of high-level executives who are guiding the group.
Millennials is headquartered in Los Angeles, but the group plans to expand into Washington and Atlanta this year and into New York, Miami, Chicago, Denver and Dallas in 2014.
Its members include travel agents, suppliers, destinations, marketing rep companies and media. Because of its Los Angeles roots, the group is attracting members from companies such as HBO and Paramount, which Smith said are a part of the travel industry, though a different sector of it.
He added that Millennials is open to alliances.
LAN Airlines was a sponsor of its February launch event, giving away two roundtrip tickets.
Smith said the group’s core values were a passionate commitment to the travel industry, behaving professionally in both social and work environments, a strong belief in the potential of travel and a desire to help drive tourism on a global level.
