How Travel Agent Trade Group Fought Its Way Back From Near-Extinction
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 years ago as being right on target. "One of the press comments, which was unfortunate but highly accurate, was you could could roll multiple cannonballs down the aisle and not worry about hitting a soul," Casto said.
But in the intervening years. ASTA has done much to turn itself around. Many point to the restructuring of the organization in 2012, when it created its first full-time president and CEO position, and the hiring of Zane Kerby to fill it the next year as pivotal events. Kerby had been number two at the Global Business Travel Association, serving as deputy executive director.
"It's changed," said Denise Jackson, president and CEO of San Diego, California-headquartered Balboa Travel Management, and chair of ASTA's Corporate Advocacy Committee, referring to the trade association's transition. "The leadership has changed, and I think that has made a significant difference. I can speak to the last five or six years. I think we are more laser-focused. People got reengaged at every level. Not just teeny, tiny agencies but large corporations."
As the chart below shows, when Kerby took up his post in 2013, following the departure of ASTA CEO Tony Gonchar a few months earlier, the association was wracking up losses. The group, which is classified as a not-for-profit trade association,
