Anna Shannon’s career path is far from straight. That’s because rather than following a path simply because she was already on it, Anna instead followed her instincts. And those instincts led her to becoming one of the industry’s most vocal travel agent advocates. This is her story.
Travel Agent Finder’s Anna Shannon had pivoted long before the pandemic co-opted the word. But instead of pivoting out of the travel industry she had pivoted into it. She’d been a successful marketing manager working with some well-known, popular brands. And then suddenly she was starting from scratch at a retail travel agency.
“Everyone around me thought I was absolutely crazy,” she tells Karryon.
“I went from being a high salary marketing manager to working in a shop with an entry level salary.
“It was a shock.”
Despite having achieved the success some only aspire too, Anna tells us she hadn’t really felt fulfilled.
“I felt like as a marketer, my job was, essentially, to sell people things that they don’t want.
“I know that’s a really base level to look at it. And I don’t necessarily think of it in the same way now. But that’s kind of the headspace that I was in at the time.”
What Anna describes next is more akin to a ‘calling’ for a vocation than just a career change.
“I just had an overwhelming need to work in travel, to make travel dreams come to life,” she says.
Anna’s gotten better at listening to her instincts but at the time, she admits she wasn’t really quite sure why she was making the move.
“I just knew that I should. And it worked out really well for me.”
The power of purpose
Anna had been with Flight Centre Travel Group for almost ten years. And she “absolutely loved” her job.
“I thought I’d be doing it forever,” she says.
“Just before COVID hit, I had my best month. It was a February (so the shortest month of the year). But I’d already done like a quarter of a million dollars worth of sales just by myself.”
“Business was booming! I was on track for my best year,” she says.
And then: COVID.
Anna, like so many of her colleagues, was stood down.
And she “really struggled” with having gone from being at the top of her game to eventually losing her job.
“I knew that if I didn’t so something with purpose, I would probably spiral into deep depression,” she tells Karryon.
“I went from 80 hour weeks to literally not having one thing to do apart from get up in the morning.”
Anna had picked up some ad hoc marketing work in her local community. She says that after seeing the differences she was making in the lives of these small business owners who were majority owner-operated, she was inspired to bring her love of travel into the mix.
“So I started to think of ways to apply this to travel businesses that were also owner-operated or mobile independent channels.
“Agents who just didn’t have the brain capacity or the time or the knowledge to increase their digital exposure.”
“I knew there was going to be a lot of business to go around, so I thought ‘Wouldn’t it be great to just get the right person to the right agent quickly?”
And the idea of Travel Agent Finder was born.
A rising tide lifts all boats
It’s a new world for Anna. And she likes it.
“I was very much in my little home-based agent world looking after my own clients,” she admits.
Now, she’s connecting with people who are happy to lift each other up. And she wants more of it.
“I’d love the industry to really support each other and promote each other more,” she says.
“There is more than enough business to go around. We all have incredibly amazing talents, skills, expertise, and just connecting the right people off the bat, I think will save a lot of people a lot of time, including travellers.”
“You know, there’s a reason that people go around price beating agents, it’s because the mentality is cheapest price. If we just get the right person to someone who blows their socks off, and books the most amazing holiday and helps them out in a jam, that agent will have a client for life.”
“And isn’t that what we all want?”
Travel Agent Finder was created as a pandemic passion project to help rebuild the industry. The company showcases Aussie travel agents’ expertise, while connecting travellers with the right expert through its specialist knowledge search engine. Travel Agent Finder offers free marketing, targeted leads and trade resources, so agents can concentrate on what they do best – designing fabulous travel experiences.
