Millennials Who are Disrupting the Travel Industry—Joan Jetsetter Included

Travel Agent magazine writes about millennials who are helping to disrupt the travel industry

With a focus on offering experience-driven products, integrating the latest tech trends and being everywhere on social media all the time, it's no secret that the travel industry is bending to the desires and needs of millennials. To update its audience on these developments, Travel Agent magazine profiled me and Millennials in Travel—an organization at which I serve as the director of social media. An excerpt is below. To read the full story, click here.

Whether it’s on the agent side or the consumer end, Millennials have become a market that cannot be ignored by anyone in the travel industry anymore. Although there are no precise dates when the Millennial Generation starts and ends, researchers and commentators use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s.

As a national career development and networking organization, Millennials in Travel is made up of the national leadership of seven directors with more than 55 years of industry experience, as well as eight current national managers who work on specific programs. Each chapter has four leadership roles: development, communications, events and membership.

“We just felt that the industry as a whole does not do a good enough job in showcasing the many opportunities there are in the travel industry,” says Joshua Smith, director of strategic development for Millennials in Travel and independent journeys product manager for Travcoa. “There is only one sector, an agency that has a brick-and-mortar office or a hotel. You can go into a hotel or an agency and say, ‘I’m looking for a job,’ but beyond that it is very challenging. The travel industry doesn’t do a good enough job of promoting other sectors. You tend to stay in the same sector, but now we are seeing moving sectors. You can learn the day and the life of a hotel representation company and may see someone who is in the airlines part of the business who might switch to hotel representation. That is the beauty and the value of the organization.”

MIT asks that members are generally born after 1975, currently pursuing a career in the travel industry and are passionate and committed to the travel industry; act professional in both social and work environments; have a strong belief in the potential of the industry; and drive tourism on a global level.