Peter Lobasso, vice president and general counsel for the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA), talks with James Shillinglaw of Insider Travel Report at last month’s ASTA Travel Advisor Conference in San Diego about ASTA’s Verified Travel Advisor (VTA) program, what it includes, how many have passed it and what it means to be a VTA. Lobasso also discusses other ASTA initiatives such as its efforts to support cruise lines that have eliminated non-commissionable fares (NCFs). For more information, visit www.asta.org.<br><br>All our Insider Travel Report video interviews are archived and available on our Youtube channel (youtube.com/insidertravelreport), and as podcasts with the same title on: Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Listen Notes, Podchaser, TuneIn + Alexa, Podbean, iHeartRadio, Google, Amazon Music/Audible, Deezer, Podcast Addict, and iTunes Apple Podcasts, which supports Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castro and Castbox.

Why ASTA Wants You to Want Your VTA

The Insider Travel Report Podcast

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** The Insider Travel Report Podcast

## Transcript

Hi, I'm James Schillinglaw for Insider Travel Report. I'm here once again at the ASTA Travel Advisor Conference, as I am every year, and have been doing this kind of conference, I don't want to tell you, since the early 90s. And it's great to see all the different travel advisors here, and this has become a more educational conference than ever.

And I'm here with Peter Labasso, who is the general counsel for ASTA, and we're going to talk to him about some of the issues and some of the things going on at ASTA and with travel advisors. And you're going to find out about that and more on Insider Travel Report. Peter, it's always great to see you and get together here and learn more about what's going on with ASTA.

Let's start. The first topic I want to talk about is something that you have really focused on in the past few years. It's the ASTA Verified Travel Advisor Program. And you put a lot of heart and effort into it to try to certify travel advisors and get them to meet certain standards. Can you first of all talk about that program and what it does? Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. And you're right, this has been a major focus for me over the last several years,

not only helping to develop the content, but also presenting at a lot of our events like we did just yesterday. We had our what we call our VTA Fast Track Program, which allows our members to obtain their certification more quickly by taking a accelerated course presentation, followed by a single exam that covers questions from all four of the core VTA courses.

And we feel really strong that there's a real urgent need to enhance the professionalism of this industry, not only to protect consumers, but also, quite frankly, because there is currently a very low barrier to entry in this industry. And we feel it's much better to self-regulate than to wait for. This isn't quite licensing, but it is a setting a set of standards that people have to pass.

And I know that a lot of it is legal, the legal requirements of being a travel advisor, which differs from other similar certification programs in the market. So you're kind of unique in that respect, right? Yeah, that's absolutely right. We spend one of the four courses. It's devoted exclusively to regulatory compliance, which is something that I don't think a lot of the other programs out there really spend all that much time on.

And then we do an extraordinarily deep dive on all things ethics related. We actually spent 50% of all the time in the sessions yesterday talking about ethics, both the ASTA code of ethics and then a number of what we call case studies, where we actually bring to light actual cases that came to us. And we talk about how we handled them, where the advisor fell short, what kind of discipline was imposed, that sort of thing.

So we're really proud of the fast track as we think it's a really great way not only to speed up the process, ...

Why ASTA Wants You to Want Your VTA

Transcript

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Why ASTA Wants You to Want Your VTA

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.