Back in the good ol’ days, travel agents were the only way to go anywhere. They created trips from scratch for their customers, sometimes even hand-writing their tickets. These travel agents show up in pop culture every so often (like in Mad Men) but other than that, are fairly obsolete. However, a new company, TripScope, which launched in December, is modernizing the travel-agent customer relationship. The company was started to create a solution for travel agents to work with their clients before, during and after trips in order to create the most personalized and up-to-date itinerary for their clients.
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The age of the travel agent
Travel agents no longer fit the old lady at the strip mall stereotypes: travel agents are the experts, planners and consultants on luxury and niche travel. Katelyn O’Shaughnessy, CEO and founder of TripScope, said she hopes that with the new connected technology TripScope offers, people will begin to see the travel industry as “the sexy industry, a rewarding industry where you become a creator of travel memories.”
Even today, 53 percent of all bookings are made by travel agents, and she hopes that the combination of technology and human touch that TripScope offers this generation helps revitalize an overlooked method of booking.
TripScope has had 1,800 active users since January 2014 and in Q3 their agreements with over 17,000 total agents will begin. Their goal for year one is to have at least 19,000 itineraries created for their travelers.
Updates on the go
TripScope means travel agents are no longer limited to handing their clients a thick packet of bookings and itineraries. Instead, the agents can create the entire itinerary on the TripScope website, which then updates in the client’s TripScope app right away. If a flight is delayed, or if an event is changed on the itinerary, a push notification will be sent straight to the client. It works both ways too; if clients are unhappy with any part of the itinerary, they can send an update to the agent, who can fix it right away.
Sharing adventures made easier
Pushing the benefits of travel agents to millennials is accomplished through TripScope’s heavy integration with social media. Travelers can share their itinerary with their friends, post pictures of the trip, and all of their updates are immediately linked to their personal agent. The My Trip section of the app lets clients create a chronological and geo-tagged scrapbook of their photos, which can then be shared with their friends, a great referral tool for the travel agents.
