Some agents spend their entire career learning and growing to become the best travel agent they can be, but what if you could skip a few tough lessons?

Travel Weekly spoke exclusively to industry legend and founder of Spencer Travel Group, Penny Spencer, to find out her most important lessons for agents.

“Travel agents will always be in business because we have the expertise and the relationships with our suppliers that will always benefit the traveller,” Spencer told TW.

As for her three key lessons for agents, she listed communication, transparency, and education as the big three.

“Listen to what the customer wants,” Spencer said on communication.

In terms of transparency, she talked specifically about charging fees.

“Don’t try to hide anything – especially the charging of service fees – you are an expert and you are offering a service so its ok to charge for that.

Finally, on education, Spencer said, “Ensure you know your product and are confident in what you are selling.

“Educate yourself regularly – webinars, travelling to new places, meeting with suppliers, learning about new hotels and destinations – this is the expertise you can give that the internet can’t.”

We quizzed Spencer on if she’d ever experienced a type of failure in her career, and how she learned from it.

“I have made many mistakes throughout my career and as a business owner which I have learnt from,” she told TW.

“I believe it’s best to always set everyone and yourself up for success but sometimes not everything goes to plan.  Every time you fail or make a mistake you learn a better way of doing things, as long as you don’t make the same mistake twice!

“One of my biggest failures/mistakes was not understanding my financials and being too proud to ask for help – overtime I lost money and had no plans in place to ensure the business would get back on track.

“From this I learnt that I needed to ask for help, educate myself and always have a contingency plan.”

Spencer also said that as the global population grows, and more and more people start travelling, we’re going to need to sell new destinations to avoid all the crowds.

“Some of the threats of travelling other than terrorism are crowds,” she said.

“July and August Europe is packed – Middle class China has only just started travelling – imagine Positano in 10 years at peak season; we need to start finding and selling new destinations.

“Obviously Global warming is a threat – will there be glaciers in Alaska for the tourist to visit, wildlife in Antarctica – will there be polar bears in 10 years’ time?

“We need to encourage people to keep travelling by coming up with new and exciting destinations and ways of travel – expedition cruising, Eco Tourism, Volunteer tourism – travelling with a purpose but also feeling safe and by using a travel agent if something goes wrong, or happens they know who to call.”

And what about the future of the travel industry?

According to Spencer, who’s agency is an accredited space agent, space travel and technological developments are the big future focuses.

“Technology is changing the shape of the industry with people being able to book on their iPhones and download every app imaginable to help them with travel plans, research, weather and when in another country language and maps,” Spencer said.

“In 10 years the industry will look very different again but who knows what that will look like – 10 years ago we didn’t have apps.

“[We’ll also see] larger aircrafts, so more capacity, more efficient aircrafts such as the Dreamliner being able to travel from Perth to London direct.

“Also with space travel, being an accredited space agent, we know that this will be happening in the next five years and will change the shape of travel.

“Cruising is a little like the aircrafts, there are larger ships making cruising more about the cruise ship as opposed to the destination.

“All of the disruptors have only improved the way people travel but also helped traditional travel agents offer new services,” Spencer added.

“One of the new trends we have been looking at is services providing clothes for frequent flyers – reducing the need for luggage.

“Companies like unpack give high end travellers access to high quality clothing which can showcase the brand to a new audience.

“Several New York hotels are also getting involved by employing sneaker and bikini concierges – airlines watch out, with no luggage they are losing a valuable revenue stream.”