[{"id":8264,"date":"2021-12-23T12:48:55","date_gmt":"2021-12-23T17:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/?p=8264"},"modified":"2021-12-23T12:48:55","modified_gmt":"2021-12-23T17:48:55","slug":"one-year-in-and-i-had-enough-experience-to-get-a-salary-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/2021\/12\/23\/one-year-in-and-i-had-enough-experience-to-get-a-salary-job\/","title":{"rendered":"One year in and I had enough experience to get a salary job!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yep, with a years experience under my belt, working solely on the commission I earned I landed a job in old Gretna as an agent.\u00a0 The agency was a big tour bus agency building customized bus groups so a lot of what I did was reconfirming hotels, restaurants etc. Keep in mind that it was the early 1980’s so we didn’t even have FAX machines so we had to call to reconfirm and take notes of who we talked to incase we needed to follow-up…. something I still do today is write down names, dates and times with my bookings.<\/p>\n

I quickly learned through all the airlines tickets and tour orders I was handwriting and was soon one of their regular agents taking phone calls as they came in. Lots of research went into those first vacations that I planned using travel books, maps and even libraries in the area.\u00a0 Fortunately for me there were several Travel Agent Familiarization (FAM) trips available back then and I took advantage of EVERYONE that popped up!<\/p>\n

I did a whirl wind fam of Orland visiting I think about 50 hotels and several attractions. Also visited Costa Rica where I trekked the rain forest, felt the Arenal volcano rumble, white water rafted and road a jungle train!\u00a0 Believe it or not I celebrated my 21st birthday in the Ginza district of Tokyo and rode the Bullet Train!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yep, with a years experience under my belt, working solely on the commission I earned I landed a job in old Gretna as an agent.\u00a0 The agency was a big tour bus agency building customized bus groups so a lot of what I did was reconfirming hotels, restaurants etc. Keep in mind that it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":7974,"date":"2020-03-31T10:20:22","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T14:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/?p=7974"},"modified":"2020-03-31T10:20:22","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T14:20:22","slug":"as-with-anything-when-you-have-no-real-experience-it-is-really-hard-to-get-your-foot-in-the-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/2020\/03\/31\/as-with-anything-when-you-have-no-real-experience-it-is-really-hard-to-get-your-foot-in-the-door\/","title":{"rendered":"As with anything, when you have NO real experience, it is really hard to get your foot in the door."},"content":{"rendered":"

I sent, and by that I mean I snail mailed, because that was all we had in 1982, to almost every travel agent in the yellow pages in the greater New Orleans area. I got not ONE response, so I decided to begin to just print up some more of my resumes, put on my best 1980’s outfit (ok I know you are envisioning that right now in your head and laughing) and hit the pavement.\u00a0 I began with those agencies that were close to where I lived, which was Chalmette and there were no travel agencies in Chalmette at that time so I ventured into New Orleans East. There were several and I think I walked into like 4 or 5 and got rejected by all of them, I stopped for a bite to eat on\u00a0 Crowder Blvd, thinking I would just head home after that when I realized there was an agency right across the street that I hadn’t visited.\u00a0 I figured what the heck, let me just go see since they are like right here anyway.\u00a0 Well upon entering Travel Fantasies, I was greeted by a petit lady named Harriett who had a distinct accent but I couldn’t figure it out.\u00a0 She was very nice and explained that she was Portuguese and had a lot of inbound travel and group travel and also that she was basically a one man show.\u00a0 Next she told me that although she really needed help, she didn’t have the funds to pay me.\u00a0 I of course at this point had to get creative so I mentioned that I would work for free if I could just get some experience.\u00a0 Her eyes lit up and she said, “I tell you what, I will pay you 1\/2 the commission on any ticket or booking you make that is NOT one of my existing clients”, well I jumped on the idea.\u00a0 I began my journey at a place called Travel Fantasies and never looked back.\u00a0 To gain clients I began with rolls of stamps and the real estate book that listed house numbers along with the names of the occupants and concentrated on the more up scale neighborhoods in St. Bernard Parish.\u00a0 I chose St. Bernard Parish because I knew lots of folk down there and hoped I would get a bite or two. I sent out a letter of introduction along with a destination brochure to tons of people and began getting calls and inquiries, I was ecstatic and instead of going in to the office the three days that we had agreed on I would call every day and ask if I could come in to use the hotel books and brochures. I had the fever and was a sponge in those early days, each new request I would pour myself into the destination until I knew all there was to know about it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sent, and by that I mean I snail mailed, because that was all we had in 1982, to almost every travel agent in the yellow pages in the greater New Orleans area. I got not ONE response, so I decided to begin to just print up some more of my resumes, put on my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":7972,"date":"2019-11-01T12:57:40","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T16:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/?p=7972"},"modified":"2019-11-01T13:36:14","modified_gmt":"2019-11-01T17:36:14","slug":"to-the-central-business-of-downtown-new-orleans-i-was-headed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/2019\/11\/01\/to-the-central-business-of-downtown-new-orleans-i-was-headed\/","title":{"rendered":"To the Central Business of Downtown New Orleans I was headed!"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the sale of Adventurer Travel to the American International Travel company located out of Baton Rouge LA I was transfered to downtown New Orleans. Located on the ground floor of the Chevron Building at the corner of Gravier and O’Keefe I was a 98% corporate agent handling travel arrangements for some of the major players in the New Orleans area. Lisko & Lewis, Jones Walker, Middle South Utilities (now Entergy) along with the administration and nuns at Hotel Dieu Hospital, the doctors and trainers that handled the New Orleans Saints.<\/p>\n

The leisure travel that I did during those 5 years was only when one of our corporate peeps needed to get away with their family. But with each vacation request I would dive into the destination, which remember was not done on the computer back then I had to go to the local library, I yearned to do more leisure arrangements. By 1988, as I was planning my wedding, Lenny and I decided that I needed to be closer to home instead of downtown if we were going to begin a family.\u00a0 I applied and got hired by two wonderful ladies who owned Carousel Travel in Chalmette an agency that was only 40% commercial and 60% leisure, I was elated!<\/p>\n

I spent from 1988 to 1996 at the same location which during that time changed ownership twice. During my time at 1308 East Judge Perez Drive we saw several changes and advancements in the travel industry and technology as a whole.\u00a0 Something that we wondered how we ever lived without came about, the Facsimile machine, WOW did this help us cover our butts.\u00a0 Now instead of just having a client tell us what and where, and us giving them flight schedules and costs we could have them FAX it to us and we would do the same with getting the information back to them, and then of course saving the information we sent to them by placing the actual paper FAX into the clients folder…. oh the paper trail in those years was long.<\/p>\n

About 1994 I was promoted to the manager of the American International office in Chalmette, YES, the Same American International that I had worked for back in the late 80’s had come full circle lucky for me I didn’t burn that bridge in 1988 and had only left to be closer to home.<\/p>\n

Now 1988 here I am working 6 blocks from home, newly married and hoping to start a family, but what was next?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the sale of Adventurer Travel to the American International Travel company located out of Baton Rouge LA I was transfered to downtown New Orleans. Located on the ground floor of the Chevron Building at the corner of Gravier and O’Keefe I was a 98% corporate agent handling travel arrangements for some of the major […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":7954,"date":"2019-01-23T08:02:22","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T13:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/?p=7954"},"modified":"2019-01-23T08:02:22","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T13:02:22","slug":"with-two-cruises-and-1-trip-to-cancun-under-my-belt-i-was-on-my-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/2019\/01\/23\/with-two-cruises-and-1-trip-to-cancun-under-my-belt-i-was-on-my-way\/","title":{"rendered":"With two cruises and 1 trip to Cancun under my belt I was on my way!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luckily I was still living at home while working at a commission only position, because out on my own I couldn’t have made it.\u00a0 I spent about a year at Travel Fantasies, all the while watching the newspaper for help wanted ads for travel agents.\u00a0 With a years worth of experience I just knew it wouldn’t be long before something would open up…. and sure enough it did! I interviewed for yet another eccentric travel agency owner. His name escapes me now,\u00a0but this\u00a0guy had big dreams with most of his plans seeming unrealistic to me, however that didn’t stop me from saying yes when he offered \u00a0$3.50 (a little above the current minimum wage for the early 80’s) an hour plus override commission if I hit a certain volume per month.\u00a0 Within two months of working at this new place I knew it was just a stepping stone to getting on with a reputable travel agency so I continued to scan the Times Picayune for travel agent openings while getting more experience under my belt.\u00a0 By the second bounced pay check from this guy I was lucky enough to land an interview with an agency\u00a0was located on the West Bank of New Orleans called Travel Consultants.\u00a0 Charlie Jones was the owner and it seemed like a really established family owned business, one that I could grown with.\u00a0 Yes my commute across the Mississippi River using the Jackson Ave\/Gretna Ferry was grueling, considering my sister and I were sharing a vehicle at the time and she would drop me at the Jackson Ave ferry landing at about 6am every morning, but hey it was what we had to do.<\/p>\n

While at Travel Consultants I got a better foundation of how an agency was really run. I learned the business end and also had several seasoned agents with years of experience around me for guidance and were more than happy to answer my questions.\u00a0 Travel Consultants allowed agents to take as many FAM trips (trips that cost very little and were sponsored by destinations and or tour companies to promote their destination or product) as they cared to as long as the agency could still handle things while they were gone.\u00a0 I spent a week in Japan, 6 days in Central America, a long weekend in the Yucatan of Mexico way before the boom of Cancun and 3 days in the Orlando area visiting what seemed like 1000 hotels, let’s just say Travel Consultants was a really good step forward for me….. but things were about to change as Charlie Jones decided he needed to retire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luckily I was still living at home while working at a commission only position, because out on my own I couldn’t have made it.\u00a0 I spent about a year at Travel Fantasies, all the while watching the newspaper for help wanted ads for travel agents.\u00a0 With a years worth of experience I just knew it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":7952,"date":"2018-11-28T13:15:14","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T18:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/?p=7952"},"modified":"2018-11-28T13:15:14","modified_gmt":"2018-11-28T18:15:14","slug":"i-was-a-harvey-bingham-travel-school-graduate-now-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/2018\/11\/28\/i-was-a-harvey-bingham-travel-school-graduate-now-what\/","title":{"rendered":"I was a Harvey Bingham Travel School Graduate, now what?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was March of 1982 and although I had learned a lot in travel school, I was green to say the least.<\/p>\n

I had never even personally\u00a0used a travel agent, my parents had never used one, and besides the agency that was next door to the Harvey Bingham School of Travel, I had never been inside a travel agency before….. boy, did I have a lot to learn.<\/p>\n

Let me set the stage of the tools that were available back then to explore destinations that one might want to visit.\u00a0 Well there was only the library and the local bookstore, and of course the National Geographic show that would come on each Sunday evening. Other than that you had to visit a travel agency, where you would be given brochures and fliers on different destinations.\u00a0 We had no internet at our finger tips, and a new agent, with little to no travel experience finding a job that actually paid a salary and not just a commission only position was extremely hard to come by.\u00a0 You see, I had visited the Florida Gulf Coast, Disney World (which at the time Epcot had just opened), Washington DC on a school trip and taken my first cruise aboard the Carnival T.S.S. Festival…… I was a newbie, but ready to learn.<\/p>\n

I walked into “Travel Fantasies”<\/p>\n

an agency in New Orleans East, met the owner Harriet who was the sole travel agent of that agency, and basically talked her into letting me come in for a few hours a day to just help with filing and answering the phones when she ran out\u00a0to the bank or to make ticket deliveries (yes tickets were\u00a0handwritten on paper back then).\u00a0\u00a0Taking detailed notes was all I was allowed to do, and little by little I learned the art of qualifying customers.\u00a0Over the course of a couple weeks, I was given some simple tasks to complete, under the watchful eye of Harriet\u00a0I put together short Disney Trips, easy roundtrips to Houston or Atlanta and even hand wrote a few tickets.\u00a0 Within a month I guess I had proved to Harriet that I was competent enough to actually begin taking calls. Of course I had to run through what the client on the phone had requested, give Harriet my thoughts and course of action and get her approval.\u00a0 I would then do the ground work, assemble the quote and again run it by Harriet for tweaking and suggestions before calling the client back.\u00a0 I guess you could say I was\u00a0sort of an\u00a0“Intern” \u00a0agent, and looking back I am happy that Travel Fantasies was a very low volume agency because it allowed me to get one on one\u00a0hands on training at a slow pace.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that all these weeks, I was not earning anything, everything was gratis.\u00a0 It wasn’t until I was actually allowed to take a client from a phone call that came in, that wasn’t already one of Harriet’s clients that I was able to earn commission on the booking.\u00a0 I still remember the amount of that commission, which I received 50% of.\u00a0 It was a GoGo\u00a0Vacations package to Cancun Mexico for a honeymoon couple and the total amount was $848.00 which brought in a whooping $42.40 for me….. This little $42.40 check for me meant that I was finally (at least in my mind) REALLY a travel agent!<\/p>\n

\"\"

E-Tickets were a thing of the distant future in 1982!<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was March of 1982 and although I had learned a lot in travel school, I was green to say the least. I had never even personally\u00a0used a travel agent, my parents had never used one, and besides the agency that was next door to the Harvey Bingham School of Travel, I had never been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":7948,"date":"2018-11-09T08:46:02","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T13:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/?p=7948"},"modified":"2018-11-09T15:10:45","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T20:10:45","slug":"lets-start-at-the-very-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/2018\/11\/09\/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s start at the very beginning!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought I would begin my first every blog on my newly designed website with how it came to be that I ended up in this crazy world of being a travel agent for the past 37 years!
\nAfter about 2 years of college it was evident that there just wasn’t anything on the campus, degree wise that appealed to me… I mean my grades were OK but nothing jumped out at me that I could say, YES, I can see myself doing that for the rest of my life.
\nMy mother, who was a hairdresser, who had a client who’s daughter was a flight attendant with Delta Airlines, actually mentioned the whole “how about something to do with travel?” idea to me. You see, each week she would listen to her client tell of how her daughter was off to these exotic places and having life experiences to die for, and it sparked my mothers interest for sure. It was 1982, and to date the only thing I had experienced was a cruise aboard the T.S.S. Festivale (yes that’s me top left, with the yellow dress on in the picture below)\u00a0with my senior class, so I was an inexperienced travel to say the least.
\nAfter looking into the whole Delta Stewardess (stew\u00b7ard\u00b7ess\/\/noun: stewardess; plural noun: stewardesses<\/p>\n

\"\"

The year was 1980, and the travel bug had bitten!<\/p><\/div>\n

a woman who is employed to provide meals for and otherwise look after the passengers on a ship or aircraft. ) thing, and making it to the 3rd level of interviews where they are about to fly you over to Atlanta for some pre training\/personality screening, I decided being a glorified waitress at 30,000 feet was not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. That and the fact that the only base camp openings they were currently offering was out of Cincinnati Ohio, I decided to look for something else. Keep in mind that this is WAY before the time of internet, fax machines or cell phones. So I dug deeper into this possibility of travel, and inquired with the girl who had handled our senior class trip, who said she had booked it through this travel agent at Scott Travel on Veterans Highway in Metairie, Louisiana. Now you know I picked up those Yellow Pages, looked up Scott Travel and proceeded to call that agency. Introducing myself to whomever answered that phone, I explained that I wanted to look into how I could become a travel agent. I was transferred to a nice lady who informed me that there was actually a “Travel School” run by two men, at a restaurant turned travel school. Their next enrollment, I found out, was to begin in just 3 short weeks, so we paid the $895.00 (which was a lot of money in 1982) and I was on my way to travel school!
\nSitting in what use to be The Red Caboose restaurant in Metairie, Louisiana for an 8 week course I learned how to hand write airline tickets, Miscellaneous Tour Orders (something used to pay for vacations before electronic bank transfers lol) and figure international and Alaska taxes. With no internet in site I began to purchase travel books by the greats like Thomas Cook, Fodor’s and several Pan Am World Guide books. I read them cover to cover, exploring the destinations and means to get around in exotic destinations, these books were my “Google”, and my only means to gaining knowledge. There were no Travel Channel, so I couldn’t be enlightened by Anthony Bourdains No Passport Required and any of the now many travel shows that take you to far off places from your couch…. if this was going to work, I had to become a sponge on all things travel, my adventure was off to a great start. I was a single, 20 year old, still living with my parents, looking for a job as a Travel Agent!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I would begin my first every blog on my newly designed website with how it came to be that I ended up in this crazy world of being a travel agent for the past 37 years! After about 2 years of college it was evident that there just wasn’t anything on the campus, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tap3.myagentgenie.com\/areyoupacked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}]