Anita Pagliasso took a leap of faith in 1992. Following her passion for travel, she switched gears from owning a successful and thriving electronic manufacturing rep business in the heart of Silicon Valley, CA., to opening her home-based travel business, Ticket To Travel. In 1993, Anita accepted Gary Fee’s challenge to become the San Jose/Bay Area Chapter director, which during parts of her 20 plus year reign became the OSSN flagship chapter. 

Anita serves as the Conference Director for the Travel Agent Forums, where she is responsible for educational content, securing relevant authors, keynote speakers, travel industry top executives, and co-coordinating panels and panelists, all while working closely with the staff at Travel Show Marketing Group. 

Anita is also a charter Executive Board member and…

Sooner or later you are going to find yourself in stressful situations while plying your trade as a travel professional. Stress seems to come with the territory and although there are ways to minimize it, I don’t believe you can avoid it all together.

I think the best advice when it comes to dealing with stress is to stop pretending the world works differently than it does. &*&% happens and it will happen to you. If you lull yourself into thinking that you are “stress-proof” then you are in for some rough sledding. But once you recognize the fact that you will indeed become uncomfortable at times you can continue to operate without falling to pieces.

Here are five ways to combat the…

It is probably the biggest complaint we hear from clients about cruising; they feel like they are “nickeled and dimed” by the cruise lines. On most cruise lines you have to pay for sodas by the drink or through a soda package. Specialty dining involves additional fees. And then there’s the pressure to pay for spa treatments, buy excursions, pay to play Bingo, etc. We can warn clients and try to prepare them for what to expect, yet they still return and complain about all of the charges they incurred on their stateroom account.

Gratuities

One question that travel professionals have asked countless times, and we’ve yet to receive an answer from the cruise lines, is about gratuities. Why can’t they simply wrap gratuities into the cruise fare…