Dinosaurs

              You thought dinosaurs were extinct, right? Wrong. You can still find a few dinosaurs in every city. However, we like to be called travel agents.
              When I told my professors at Clemson that I wanted to be a travel agent they laughed at me. They told me I was wasting my potential on a dieing industry. I let my stubborn streak shine and I ignored them. I worked with AAA Vacations for 2 summers and I knew how busy they were! There was no way they were going to be extinct before I graduated!
               I read an article in Travel Weekly last year that called travel agents "cockroaches" because we have survived the unthinkable. Everyone thought that travel agents would die with the birth of the internet but we are alive and well! Yes, maybe the industry sufferered a bit with the explosion of onlne agencies i.e Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, but while the internet has served to provide a wealth of information it has also proved to overwhelm the average traveler with too much information! Travel agents are thriving today because so many people have been burned by internet travel sites or they are simply too busy to spend their time researching or they are overwhelmed by all the opinions and information available online.
               It is a fact that I am the youngest travel agent in Wilmington, possibly in all of AAA Carolinas. Most of the women I work with have been in the industry as long as I have been alive (sorry ladies, you know it's true!). One of the agents named me "Little Foot" from the Land Before Time because she says the older dinosaurs (travel agents) have to teach me everything they know before they die. I don't think of being the youngest agent as a bad thing! I have learned so much from the women I work with! They have seen the changes in the travel industry first hand and they are a wealth of information! Many of the women have traveled all over the world so they can give me advice that I could only read about. I am so blessed to have found my passion at a young age and to have found a career that lets me share my passion with others! A lot of people my age are still trying to decide what they want to do with their lives while I have been able to dive head first into my career!