College Graduates are Choosing Careers as Travel Agents.

It was back in high school that Carmen Lopes first thought about a career in travel. When her high school sat her in front of a computer to research possible careers, Carmen somehow kept coming back to the ones in the travel industry.

She hasn’t really seen the world yet. She’s never been to London or Paris, let alone Bora Bora,

although she hopes to get there one day. But, after taking a cruise she is determined to make it her life’s work.

In September Carmen found her niche, at least for now, as a travel agent specializing in destination weddings and honeymoons in Milford, Mass.

Carmen’s is taking a program for Destination Weddings and Honeymoons specialists. She’s also going on her first Fam trip in November to honeymoon mecca Jamaica.

“There are so many different fields in travel and that element of the unknown is what I love about it,” Carmen said. “In 20 years I could be in a totally different area.”

For now though she spends much of her time training with different vendors and with request from customers looking for help with their vacation plans.

Her first customer was an easy one. He was celebrating his first anniversary and already had planned the details of the honeymoon he had never taken.

Carmen’s short-term goal is to expand both her knowledge and her customer base.
She hopes handling weddings will help with the latter as young clients refer their friends and return for anniversaries and family events in the future.

Not everyone has time to spend hours doing research on the computer but that’s where a dedicated and determined agent can add real value, Carmen said.

“The best day is when you can show the client the benefit of using a travel agent,” she said.
For now Carmen plans to build her own clientele by training, talking with vendors and marketing executives, using Twitter “to remind them I’m here,” and just plain hard work.

Down the road she thinks she’d like to specialize in Central America, “a market many customers don’t know much about.”

She doesn’t have a five-year plan, as a 22-year-old Carmen said, she has a lot of options. “It’s a perfect time to experience and visit all these different countries, to go cruising.”

But she’s sure of one thing: What started as a part time experiment in trying something new has turned into the career she wants to follow. “When I originally thought of travel agents I felt like it was a dying industry,” Carmen acknowledged.

“But now I really understand that the knowledge and experience the travel agent brings to the table is of huge importance.”

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