Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I'll write complicated, expensive tickets, but I receive the same flat commission per ticket
no matter if it is a first-class eight-thousand-dollar ticket or a five-hundred-dollar economy
class.”
Specialties are loosely based on geography but also on the type of traveler. They are
divided by lifestyle or age, with retirees a gold mine for the agency, especially since they
travel in groups or buy packages that yield higher fees and commissions. “Americans like
to travel in groups, to buy packages. They will buy a vacation where we plan their days,
where they will eat, the sites they will see, where they will sleep.”
Those of us who are old-fashioned and strike out on our own are becoming a minority
and are known as FITs, or fully independent travelers. “For FITs we find the airline tickets
and the hotels and that's about it.”
His geographic specialty is Europe. One of his agents sells group tours to France and
Italy for women. A Greek-American with a family home on a Greek island, Mavrogiannis
is an expert on the Mediterranean. “We sell what we know,” he said.
I asked him to demonstrate buying simple tickets for Bill and me to Minneapolis-St.
Paul. For an earlier trip to the Twin Cities, Bill had spent half an hour on the computer
and bought what he had considered a bargain even though it required changing airplanes
in Milwaukee. In less than one minute, Mavrogiannis found a less expensive ticket and a
direct route. “It's the software,” he said. His commission was $42 per ticket.
Being a travel agent not only pays his bills but allows Mavrogiannis to travel frequently
and spend long spells in Greece. He isn't getting rich, but he is leading the life he had
imagined when he earned his master's degree at George Washington University.
• • •
America gave the world two great tourist concepts: the national park and the theme park:
Yellowstone and Disneyland. Between the two, they define vacations in America and have
gone some way to influencing how the rest of the world enjoys a holiday.
The U.S. National Park System of 394 parks has saved the wilderness and could help
save the planet. They are public property, though, and not major profit centers. For the
tourism industry, they are a lure to other venues in the United States. Despite the parks'
offering of rare wilderness and phenomenal beauty, visits to them peaked at 287.2 million
in 1987, just before the explosion in tourism around the world. The numbers are climbing
back up. In 2009, the figure was 285 million visitors.
Compare that to Disney parks and resorts, which had 119.1 million paying visitors in
the same year; the top ten theme park chains welcomed 326.5 million visitors in the Un-
ited States. Those children and their families spent billions: Disney led the pack here, too,
earning $2.41 billion. Disneyland and its offspring have become an integral part of child-
hood in the United States and, increasingly, around the world.
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