Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees … I joined the travel industry almost 48 years ago when I started at Fanshawe College in London, Ont., yet my journey’s biggest lessons hit me in the few months since I retired (at the end of 2024).
I had no idea what to expect, and while I knew that it would never be a hard-stop when suddenly I would no longer think about the business, the people, the industry, and my friends and colleagues, how could it go from 24-7 to zero? After so many years?
Well, it didn’t.
While I will share more from my journey in this industry I love with readers in future articles – assuming I pass the audition, to paraphrase Mr. Lennon – I now have a new perspective: no longer one of a business owner, but of a business observer. And one with a lot of experience.
(Ed. note: The London-Ont.-based author, who now aspires to be the bassist for Oasis, retired as president of Nexion Travel Group Canada, a host travel agency that is part of the Internova Travel Group; P.S. He passed the audition!)
My new vantage point as a recent retiree has given me a clarity I never had while running my business day-to-day. When you’re in the midst of operations – handling client emergencies, managing supplier relationships, navigating reservation systems – you’re constantly reacting. You focus on what’s directly in front of you. Now, with distance, I can see patterns that were invisible to me before.
The most striking revelation? The fundamentals of success in travel advising haven’t changed much in nearly five decades. While we’ve seen dramatic shifts in technology, consumer expectations, and global accessibility, the essence of what makes a travel advisor valuable remains remarkably consistent.
The lesson that taught me to see the forest came early in my career, and it still guides me today.
I was pursuing corporate travel clients – small to medium-sized companies with good prospects for leisure travel from their employees. I particularly wanted the City of London (Ont.) account. When their Request for Proposals came in, I put together what I thought was an impressive presentation focused on how we could save them money on travel costs.
We didn’t win the account.
Rather than simply moving on, I reached out to the purchasing head to ask for feedback. I wanted to learn from the disappointment. They were impressed that I even followed up and asked – and because I did, they gave me a meeting where I could better understand what went wrong.
The lesson was both humbling and enlightening. They acknowledged that my presentation was well-crafted and professional, but I had completely missed the mark on what they actually valued. While I had focused intensely on cost savings – the “trees” of lower fares and reduced expenses – I had failed to see the “forest” of their real priorities.
Their feedback was simple but profound: “Saving $100 on a flight is good, but if that flight makes two stops and adds risk or makes for long and tiring travel, we’d prefer to spend the extra $100 to have our employee arrive on time and ready to do their work.”
I had assumed I knew what they wanted without actually asking what they needed.
This early lesson taught me that success in travel advising isn’t about demonstrating your expertise with systems, suppliers, or cost-cutting strategies – though those matter. It’s about first understanding what your clients truly value, then applying your expertise to deliver exactly that.
Today’s travel advisor still needs to decide what they want to sell, learn more about that niche than the people who are prospects for that kind of travel, and find where they can connect with prospects for those services.
But the critical first step – the one I almost missed entirely – is to genuinely understand what success looks like for prospects in that niche, and their perspective, not your own.
It’s still all about effective communication with prospects and clients, doing great research to match best solutions for clients’ needs, and effective marketing of who you are, what you do, and how you can help a prospect. But communication starts with listening, research begins with understanding the real problem to solve, and marketing works best when it addresses what prospects actually care about.
Simple, right?
The forest I can now see clearly is this: while it’s easy to be distracted by the headlines and ever-changing systems and tools, your clients want help to plan a trip that meets their specific needs and priorities. Same as it always has been. The good news is that with today’s tools, technology, and systems, travel consultants have more resources than ever before to deliver what clients have always wanted – but only if we remember to ask what that actually is.
The lesson from my retirement perspective is that many travel professionals get so caught up in demonstrating their technical knowledge and industry expertise that they lose sight of the fundamental truth: our job isn’t to show clients how much we know about travel. Our job is to show them how well we understand what they need from their travel experience.
When I was in the thick of daily operations, each new industry development felt crucial and urgent. Now I can see that while some aspects of our industry have grown and others have fallen away, the core remains unchanged. The travel advisors who thrive are those who can distinguish between what’s genuinely important to their clients and what’s just industry noise.
That City of London lesson taught me to see the forest – and nearly five decades later, it’s still the clearest view I have of what makes this business work.