It's been said that one should never work for a company they admire. I'm not sure I believe that, as I have worked for companies I've admired that made me a part of the family (looking at you, TWA, America West Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Continental Airlines, and Alaska Airlines). Then there have been some that are only admirable on the outside, but take a look behind the shiny kool-aid veneer, not everything is quite as rosy as they appear (in my case, it was post-Covid jetBlue Airways and Delta Air Lines).
Sadly, such is the case with Christopherson Business Travel out of Murray, Utah. This group used to be the shiniest beacon of the corporate travel landscape for decades, known the world over for their precise and competent, not to mention over-the-top care they take in making sure each client's travelers are booked and complete their trip with zero snafus. If something did happen in transit, the agent on the other end of the line or email was on top of it. When I first delved into the corporate side of booking travel, this is where I applied first. I didn't get it, but that was okay; I needed to gain some proper seasoning as an agent elsewhere first. But I digress, let's fast forward about a decade and a half.
Post Covid Ramping Up
There's no doubt about it: The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic nearly obliterated the travel industry worldwide. Countries were closing up not just daily but hourly. Travel industry cancellation departments were lit up like Christmas trees. I recall myself being on hold with Southwest Airlines' Group Desk for over five hours one day trying to get through to cancel out over a dozen group bookings I had with UNLV Athletics. It was a disaster for the industry as a whole; forget about the worldwide population.
Once the all-clear was sounded and things were looking like they were coming back to normal, travel agencies, airlines, hotels, car hires, EVERYBODY had to figure out how to cope with the sudden insane demand. Admittedly, Leisure Travel came back with a vengeance; people the world over had enough of being stuck indoors and wanted out. Business Travel took a little bit longer, naturally, as more companies developed Work-From-Home or a hybrid work concept that really curtailed travel and their associated expenses.
Corporate travel agencies such as AMEX, Short's, and Christopherson had to realign and restructure their workforces, policies, and procedures to accommodate the changes happening at various travel vendors. Travelers saw more frequent use of in-phone apps (looking at you, Concur) and live up-to-the-minute adjustments on their bookings. If something went wrong, they'd call an agent. Or with many companies, Concur and other apps wouldn't allow the traveler to self-book for a myriad of contract-related reasons, so they would call an agent right from square one.
Signing On with AMEX GBT
After the pandemic, I came back home to Utah and decided to put myself to use and see how some of the bigger corporate agencies were ramping up and how their reputation and stability stack up post-COVID. First up was American Express Global Business Travel (now AMEX GBT).
Before Covid, AMEX was THE place to be if you're an experienced agent looking to get into the Corporate Travel game, or if you already did Corporate, move up the ladder to the gold standard where all others were measured against. Ever since I could remember, I wanted to get out of leisure travel and end up doing corporate travel at American Express. They had that kind of reputation.
In 2022, AMEX actually headhunted me away from Travco, where I was handling travel for the US Air Force out of Hill Air Force Base. Even though I worked on base less than 2 miles from my house, after my Dad passed away in 2022, my Mom needed closer day-to-day supervision and care due to all her health problems. So when AMEX called and offered me a work-from-home position with better pay, benefits, and perks, I jumped at the chance.
Onboarding was a breeze, nothing to report there. Training was quite thorough; those of us in that particular class had to achieve a grade of 92% or above in the Worldspan GDS tests each week to progress to the next week. Since I had been using Worldspan on and off since my very first at-home travel agency a few decades ago, it was not all that difficult. The trainers actually took the time to meet with those who had difficulties or didn't understand certain booking methods or concepts (or those old-school long sell formats), and we all made it through, except for one unfortunate new hire who had to postpone training until the next class due to a family emergency halfway through the 6-week period.
Once we had been placed in our teams and were producing for AMEX, the work itself was pretty straightforward and relatively easy, as most of the clients knew where they needed to go and where to stay, etc. Where the problems lay, though, were in the direct supervision just above the agents. At the time I spent there, there were supervisors, team leads, and managers who were agents just before Covid, and because of the turnover, they were the last ones standing and moved into higher positions they were nowhere remotely qualified for. The agents frequently found themselves completely lost with zero help unless they reached out to higher management above these supervisors and managers, or they would just huddle with other agents and get things done that way. The severe lack of proper supervision and management led to several big Fortune 500 clients abandoning AMEX due to poor quality and handling of their travelers.
After about three months of this, and with constant turnover at all levels, even in the C-suites, AMEX did a partial clean sweep of its operation and either let go of or retrained the lower management levels that deal with the agents day-to-day, and doubled down on its efforts to keep its reputation from faltering going forward. Last time I checked, several of these big clients have returned to AMEX, and good on them. AMEX knew it blundered and made steps towards improving its image, reputation, and product going forward. I stayed with AMEX for a year before resigning due to family issues going on at the time.
Coming Home to Christopherson Business Travel
Christopherson Business Travel, in its heyday, was one of the better-known and most trusted of all the smaller non-bank-owned affiliated travel agencies. They were so selective in their hiring that there would be hundreds of applicants for a single position, with only one or two making it to the interview stage, and then it would be narrowed down to the best of those. It was extremely difficult to get in if you were a newbie or leisure agent looking to switch over to the corporate side. Once in, though, there was very little dissension or negativity, as agents reported it was one of the best places to work year over year.
I saw an opening posted online and decided to apply to see where it would go. Sure enough, I had an interview just a few days later with a former co-worker of mine from another company I was with a decade ago, and one of her team leads. It was a laid-back, very sociable interview, nothing like what I had heard of or read about in the past. I was hired on the spot.
Training began three weeks later. Onboarding took a single day, as it should. The actual training was a bit of a flop, though. A few of the trainees had ongoing IT and equipment problems that just could not be fixed at all, and therefore they were thrown into production with very little training, or bits and pieces of knowledge on what they were supposed to do. I myself had a bad computer that had to be replaced twice during my tenure. Tech problems aside, training was handled by one of the managers, who was also overseeing her production team, as well as constantly being in meetings with higher-ups. Needless to say, it was not a very conducive environment for training, with all the problems and distractions.
Faulty equipment and subpar training aside, completing, changing, or fixing a booking almost always required other agents' help, as there was no managerial presence whatsoever. Throughout my entire tenure there, it was basically all the agents leaning on each other to get anything done, as the managers who were there were always in meetings or otherwise unavailable to us grunts, unless we needed a talking to, reprimand, or write-up.
We were always told there's a new lead or new supervisor coming aboard in the next few weeks. This went on from the end of November 2023 all the way to March 2024. When we finally did get a new supervisor, they clearly did not have the knowledge or experience to help out or even to supervise in a basic way, shape, or form. They had even gone on record in a meeting once where they blurted out that they do indeed fake it until they make it. This is where Christopherson's downhill trajectory steepened.
This aforementioned supervisor clearly had zero GDS (Global Distribution System - what us agents use to book, change, fix, and ticket bookings) experience. When you asked them for any sort of assistance, they would either answer you by asking another question or shuffle you off to one of the other overtaxed agents online. If you dared to question their authority, heaven help you, as you would be on the carpet with HR, as he would constantly use HR as a bully shield against the rest of the agents. On the after-hours team, there were only 1 or 2 agents that always escaped their wrath simply because they were their hand-picked favorites. From the group of new hires I was in, every single one was let go by this particular supervisor, and HR and middle management either never looked into any complaints from us or just brushed it under the rug like it never happened.
Where was senior management in all this? Something tells me they never knew. There is a massive disconnect between the lower production rungs and supervisory levels and the C-Suites that it's not all that surprising they would have absolutely zero idea as to what is going on. Sure, they see the turnover numbers, but do they really know why that's happening? Probably not. Like I said above, at Christopherson anyways, HR is the buffer and shield between the day-to-day work and turmoil and the neverland the C-Suites in Murray, Utah reside in. I'm willing to bet that their CEO, Mike Cameron, does not know anything about what's going on down below.
Conclusion
There is a massive brain drain in the industry right now, thanks to the Covid pandemic. Whether from folks getting sick, taking early retirements, buy-outs, etc., so much experience, generally accepted knowledge, subject expertise, and managerial prowess has been taken out of the field that a LOT of TMCs (Travel Management Companies) are left reeling, and promoting those from within who don't quite have the expertise or experience yet, or if hiring externally, they take any warm body off the street they can. The travel industry has permanently changed, and not exactly for the better. TMCs need to get back to their old hiring practices and weed out the riffraff and those not worthy.
It's not just hiring practices though, training departments have also been decimated, and training has been left to whoever just happens to be standing around that might know what to do and show new agents what to do. Sadly, in a lot of instances, that is not the case. If you're going to train new hires, fully commit to the role, and don't let these trainers be bombarded and watered down by daily distractions like almost hourly meetings by every other department in the company. The clients, agents, and industry at large deserve better.
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