All the Reasons You Should Use a Travel Agent Human travel agents have become more relevant than ever, and have proven why they can be better for you than online booking Author: By Sally French It’s no secret that 2020 was one of the worst years to work in travel, with an estimated 100 million direct tourism jobs at risk worldwide, according to an August 2020 policy brief from the United Nations. But there’s one tourism job that has become more relevant than ever: the travel agent. Before coronavirus, it seemed the travel agent was a dying profession. The internet made it easy to research your own destinations, compare costs, find availability and book. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2019 projected that employment of travel agents would decline by 26% from 2019 to 2029, a loss of 21,300 jobs nationwide.