If you're thinking of going on a trip . . .

By Michael Martinez
Mercury News

Fridays are usually quiet at Ticket to Travel, the San Jose travel agency that Anita Pagliasso has owned since 1992. But already e-mails are piling up and the phone is ringing, and it's only morning. So Pagliasso-Balamane will make her usual short commute from her living-room sofa to her small home office and get to work.

Like a growing number of travel agents, Pagliasso-Balamane does business from home. She's part of a growing trend in her industry -- travel agents who never see the inside of a brick-and-mortar office.

They're called home-based (or virtual) travel agents; they work from home offices, kitchen tables, coffee shops or anywhere else they can get an Internet connection. Although traditional storefront agencies still exist, the opportunities to thumb through brochures and plan a trip at a travel agency are slowly declining.

The number of home-based agents is rising as storefronts, having lost the airline commissions that once sustained them, either closed or were consolidated into larger agencies. Nationally, the number of travel-agency outlets has fallen from about 29,200 in 2001 to 20,300 last year, according to the Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks airline ticket sales from travel agents.

By contrast, membership in the two associations representing home-based agents, the National Association of Commissioned Travel Agents (NACTA) and the Outside Sales Support Network (OSSN), has more than tripled since 2000.

Home-based travel agencies "may be the way of the future,'' said Helen Baldovinos, co-owner of Let's Travel in San Jose. "But I'm old school. I have a hard time thinking that without storefront agencies, it's a good thing. People still like to come in and look at brochures.''

Improved technology is one reason many agents no longer need to work from a storefront. The Global Distribution System, a computer reservation system available only to professional travel agents, can now be linked directly from host agencies to home-based agents' computers. Agents can also find travel suppliers' e-brochures online, and cell phones and fax machines make doing business from home as easy as it is from an office desk.

It was the Internet itself that made travel planning so convenient that travel agents were forced to reinvent themselves or lose their businesses. Most could see changes coming a decade ago when airlines began reducing commissions to agents for booking tickets. By 2002, those commissions -- which sometimes accounted for more than half an agency's revenues -- were completely gone.

Agents shift focus

"It was a difficult adjustment for travel agents to make,'' said Joanie Ogg, president of NACTA. "When airlines cut commissions, agents had to start working smaller and realize their profits were in selling leisure travel,'' not airline tickets. "They realized that was what they were best at doing, consulting with their expertise.''

It wasn't just the loss in commissions that affected the industry. Leisure travel slumped following the 2001 terrorist attacks, and business travel fell as a result of a sluggish economy. Major Web sites such as Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity, which allow consumers to plan and book their own travel, also dealt a blow to traditional agents.

Some agencies trimmed staff or merged with other agencies. But some took their business home, relying on a strong client base, referrals and their own Web sites to attract new customers. They saved money on rent, which offset the loss of commissions, although they lost walk-up business.

To keep going, agents offered what Internet sites couldn't -- personalized service from agents who specialize in one or more areas of travel, from cruises to adventure to ecotourism to Hawaiian honeymoons.

"Our clients are looking for our expertise, and they have certain expectations,'' said Alan Reader, president of Reader Travel Group in Orinda. ``We can recommend a hotel, and we can tell you which room in that hotel you should stay in. We're getting down to those specifics.''

Cindy Tucci, who owns The Travelsmiths, a brick-and-mortar agency in Cupertino, echoed that sentiment. "A person who's just working from home doesn't have the support system of a full-service office. If someone comes in and wants to go to Antarctica and I haven't been there, I know that there's someone in the office who has.''

Most consumers who book travel on the phone might not even realize they're talking to a home-based agent, who can be located anywhere in the country. But there are benefits, if the agent is located nearby: Some go to their clients' offices or homes to plan travel, and they'll often deliver documents and tickets to their customers, as Pagliasso-Balamane and her husband Baghdadi frequently do (some traditional travel agencies also provide this service).

Many storefront companies employ salaried agents but also have contracts with home-based agents -- independent contractors who share commissions with their ``host'' agencies. They can set their own hours and work as much, or as little, as they want. But earning decent commissions usually means rising early and working into the evening, often without a break.

"I hate to admit it,'' Susan Cole, a virtual agent who lives in Santa Rosa, said one afternoon, "but it's been so busy that I'm still sitting here in my robe.'' Cole specializes in cruise travel.

Pagliasso-Balamane said she's up by 6:30 every morning and walks four miles before starting work. Most days, her e-mail queue contains 100 or more messages by the time she returns home. "But some days I can't even take my walks,'' she said. ``I have to get to the e-mails, or work up proposals for clients.''

Some agents have to pull themselves away from the job.

Shut off the computer

"A lot of times, I find myself working harder from home than I did in the office,'' said Penny Nurse, a home-based agent who used to commute to O'Brien Travel in San Jose but now books travel from her Pleasanton home. "I start early in the morning, and the next thing I know it's 1 o'clock. So I'll leave, go to another part of the house and do something.

"I finally reached a point where I said, `At 5 o'clock, I'm shutting off the computer and not working anymore.' ''

Home-based agents "are like specialists, like doctors,'' said Brad Anderson, president of America's Vacation Center, based in Escondido. "People who call us want to talk to a specialist. They don't feel comfortable spending a few thousand dollars with the click of a mouse.''

His company reduced the number of its retail locations from 10 to three and now uses about 200 agents who work from home.

But whether these home-based agents will replace brick-and-mortar agencies is doubtful. For many consumers, coming into an office to plan a trip is preferable to talking to someone on the phone or arranging it themselves online.

"People pride themselves on being able to go on the Internet and gather information,'' said Paul Kloetzel, co-owner of O'Brien Travel. "But when it comes to purchasing a $25,000 African safari, you're not going to buy it online from some unknown entity.''