Burnout is becoming an increasingly pressing issue for travel agents in today’s fast-paced, high-demand industry, with Virtuoso Senior Vice President, Global Operations Michael Londregan urging advisors to recognise the signs.
“The industry success starts to eat itself from the inside out,” he told LATTE at the Virtuoso ANZ Forum last week in Perth, referring to travel agents overwhelmed by the constant pressure to grow their businesses and meet customer expectations.
The challenge stems from a lack of strategic planning, according to Londregan. Without thoughtful consideration for long-term sustainability, burnout sets in. “A great farmer lets a field recover. They don’t just keep taking from it,” he said.
Similarly, travel agencies need to recognise the importance of allowing their workforce time to recharge, otherwise, the results can be detrimental to both employees and customer service.
One solution comes from focusing on working on the business, rather than just in it, he advised, “Spend 20% of your time working on your business,” he said.
Londregan identified events like the Virtuoso Forum and Symposium as platforms for travel agents to take a step back and strategise. “When you put the best people in the industry together, they share ideas and strategies that help everyone,” he said.
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Sessions held at this year’s event included From the Deep with Australian freediving expert and mental health advocate Adam Sellars who talked about how to deal with pressure and channel your mind to perform at peak levels.
“We have a custodial responsibility to this group of incredibly talented people to keep them fresh and keep them alert,” Londregan said.
Meanwhile, Perchalla & Turner Travel Associates Manager Becky Kent-Perchalla agreed that she was seeing burnout in the industry and even in her own agency coming out of COVID.
But her team had successfully steered through that period by emphasizing communication, she told LATTE.
“We can only control what we can control,” she said. “If you just keep the lines of communication open and set expectation, it takes the pressure off everyone – you haven’t got people chasing you, you haven’t got the pressure on yourself building up.
“I think a lot of it is communication. And we just sometimes forget that. We forget to breathe.”
