Have you ever worked at a “regular” job – you know, teacher, accountant, firefighter, barber, doctor… – and thought you were going to go crazy if you couldn’t take some time off for vacation? What did you want to do when you were dreaming of being anywhere but at your job?
If you said, “travel,” then you’re my kind of person. Some folks, like us, love to travel and find great relaxation in “getting away ✈️ from it all.” Surely trading in that nine-to-five for a job that is entirely built around travel would be a great way to relieve your stress, right?
I know for myself that planning, arranging, and booking a family of twelve’s three-week vacation in Timbuktu would be far less stressful than creating a PowerPoint presentation about a new kind of eraser my pencil company is making, or whatever it is that people with regular jobs talk about. 🥱 That’s just the way I’m wired. Your mileage may vary.
So, is working as a travel agent stressful? Maybe not as much as many other jobs, it’s true. Does that mean it’s just plain not stressful at all? Well… no.
Travel agents face a lot of the same pressures as anybody else. Deadlines ⏲️ for booking rooms and plane tickets. Managing change when something goes awry. Budgeting. It’s all there. Add in the fact that people – families, more often than not – are counting on your skills and expertise to ensure that they get the maximum enjoyment out of their precious vacation time. You don’t want to disappoint people, and you don’t want to receive a negative Yelp review or anything like that either. So, lots of factors to plug into the ol’ 🌡️ Stress-o-Meter…
In the end, only you can determine whether you find working as a travel agent stressful. Your tolerance for deadlines, demanding customers, multi-tasking, and other challenges that come with the territory will make up the stress level you feel.
Of course, the same could be said for any job, doing anything. So if you're going to have those stressors in your life, you might as well face them down while doing something you enjoy, like planning vacations, rather than while doing something boring and tedious like… everything else!
Want more insight on the subject? Check out my video, “Is Working As a Travel Agent Stressful?” linked below.