The Hidden World of the Travel Agent
The Hidden World of the Travel Agent
A friend – a seasoned traveller – once said that the most exciting sound in the world was the ‘click, click, click’ of the destination boards flicking over at the Gare du Nord in Paris. It is the sense of the endless possibilities, of places waiting to be visited.
Christine knows the feeling. She’s worked as a Travel Agent for – she mentions the years and then smiles. “Just say ‘a lot’,” she says.
Her office is light and spacious. It’s not one of the places where you are bombarded with wall-to-wall brochures and screaming prices. There is a large framed photo on the wall, a Norman Parkinson print of a willowy woman from the 1960’s, wearing a solar topee, carrying a light travel case, framed by the propellers of an old aeroplane. “The Art of Travel” it says. The screensaver on her computer is of a Provencal cottage with mauve walls and a faded blue window. The art of being a Travel Agent.
And, talking to Christine, you realise that it is an art. “Yes, it is a business,” she says. “But it’s a business where the people who come to you need to have significant trust.” Travel is an infinitely complex process and we just take it for granted that the Travel Agent will sort things out for us. And all the little details, the things that would clog most of our brains – getting from Place A to Place B and making sure that there is a car to take you to Place C where you want a bed in a particular hotel before you jet off to Place D – Christine does it. “It’s very challenging work,” she says. “We depend a lot on people over whom we have no control.” And then mentions, a quick aside, her lack of fondness for embassies. But, ever polite, she won’t say which ones.
It’s not the customer’s problem. She just takes care of it.
Christine exudes a calm unflappability. If anyone was going to sort out a travel problem, you just know it would be her. And the problems don’t end when the tickets are booked and the customer’s on the plane. She raises the subject of the internet and people using it to organise their own travel and do their own bookings. It is, you would think, a thorny subject, but not a bit of it. “The internet’s not bad. It’s just different,” she says. “We have people that will use the internet to check things out and to get information, but they will still use us. Take a businessman. We’ve booked him to Frankfurt but when he’s there he wants to change his itinerary. He calls his PA. His PA calls us. And rather than him spending half a day waiting to get to the airline counter, we sort it out on the spot.”
She recounts the traveller’s worst nightmare. “We had some clients in Italy and somehow or other they had everything stolen. They called us – huge panic. It was the middle of the night but we just got on the phone and organised emergency passports and cancelled their credit cards and arranged to get some money to them.” She speaks matter-of-factly. It’s all in a day’s work. Were they grateful, I ask. “Oh yes,” she says with a big smile. “They’re good customers.”
A man pops his head around the door, an acquaintance. “Are you working tomorrow?” he asks. Tomorrow is Saturday. “Do you need me to be?” quick as a flash comes her reply. The man stands hurried and harried. He explains that his Mum is in hospital and he has to… his voice trails off. “Don’t worry, just call me tonight,” Christine reassures him. She wasn’t working tomorrow. Hopefully she still won’t be working tomorrow. But he’s a client as well as a friend and that comes first.
Christine says that she still gets a ‘buzz’ out of people enjoying their trips. “People come back and say ‘That was great!’ It doesn’t matter how many years you do the job, the pleasure of that doesn’t go away.” she says.
And the question everyone must ask. “Do you get to travel much?” The job as a hobby, the hobby as a job? She thinks about it. Yes, she has travelled, well and widely. A momentary pause as she counts up in her head. She thinks that between the people in the office, they have probably done most of the countries in the world. That’s part of their job. We see only the pleasure, they see the work. Christine smiles and gathers up some papers. Would I excuse please her? She has to drive into the city to pick up some tickets. Somebody, somewhere will be on a plane tomorrow. Will he or she even think about how they got there? Probably not. That’s the job of the travel agent.
