The DHS shutdown has turned airports into obstacle courses. Last week, I got a text from our very own Chief Revenue Officer, Joshua Harrell, who was flying back from the Roadshow. It said, “Spent over 5 hours in the TSA line and never made it through security before the last flight of the day left. I’m rebooked for tomorrow. That was excruciating.”
TSA agents quitting by the hundreds. Wait times stretching in many cases beyond human comprehension. Nearly 4,500 flight disruptions on a single day last Friday. And all of it landing squarely on spring break, when travel advisors’ clients are traveling with kids and tight schedules.
Here is what I want you to think about: what an advisor does during weeks like these is the most valuable marketing asset they will create all year. Sadly, too many will never take advantage of it, because they’re too busy moving on to the next booking.
The Invisible Work Problem
Independent advisors have a branding problem that never gets talked about. The better they are at your job, the less clients notice them doing it. When you rebook a family's connection at 10 PM so they do not get stranded in Dallas, they don’t see the forty-five minutes you spent on hold. They don’t see you checking three backup routing options. They see a seamless trip.
That is the paradox: your best work is invisible to the people who benefit from it most.
Which means that, as an advisor, you have to make it visible. Not in a self-congratulatory way. In a way that helps people understand what they are actually getting when they work with you.
The Bigger Picture
Here is what is happening in the travel industry right now, and I want everyone to see it clearly, because it is working in the favor of travel advisors.
Travelers are consolidating. The "one big trip" pattern is real. Families are cutting spending in other areas to protect their travel budget, planning fewer trips but making each one count. The average planned leisure trip is stretching to fifteen days. People are choosing destinations based on purpose, not just price, asking "What do I want this trip to do for us?" before they ask, "Where should we go?"
Longer trips. Higher stakes. More complexity.
The DHS situation will eventually get resolved. The tariff and oil shock-driven price increases working their way through hotels and airlines could keep climbing. The world is not getting simpler for travelers. It is getting more complicated, more expensive, and harder to navigate alone.
Every single one of those trends makes travel advisors more valuable, not less!
But, in the world of travel advisors, that’s only if people know you exist. And the single best way for people to find out you exist is for your current clients to tell them what you did when things got hard, so make sure your current clients have at least a small view into the pain you’re saving them from.
Do not let this moment pass without capturing it.
Best Success,
Jason