4,000 travel agencies. And a succession problem nobody talks about.

German tourism employs roughly 17,000 fewer people today than in 2019.

That is not a cycle. It is a structural break.

For ten years the industry has told itself the same story: we are losing to the online portals.

Wrong.

Travel agencies are not dying because of Amazon. They are dying of succession.

Fewer than 2,000 people are currently training as travel and tourism agents. Before the pandemic, it was around 4,500.

The average agency owner today has no successor. And no one to train, even if they wanted to.

This is not a sales problem. It is an ownership problem.

I have played this through once before, start to finish, in financial services. Ten acquisitions in three years. The trigger was almost never competitive pressure. It was the owner's age.

What follows:

• If you want to sell in five years, start today. Not with the sale. With making the business transferable.
• A company that does not run without its owner is not a company. It is a job.
• Automation is not an efficiency topic here. It is what makes the business buyable in the first place.
• The price is not decided in the negotiation. It is decided three years before.

Consolidation does not come because someone wants it. It comes because the alternative is extinction.

Who here has a successor — and who is still hoping?