Cheryl Cashman has launched a travel business called Adventure Artisans, operating out of her home near Kala Point. She and business partner Susan Valentino (working from her home near Chicago) book travel for clients who have a yen for adventure.

“It’s a new business model,” said Cashman, who has lived in the Port Townsend area for eight years, in a press release. “You don’t need a storefront anymore. We can do everything by phone and email. The Internet may have changed the travel agent business, but it hasn’t killed it.”

After a U.S. peak of about 34,000 retail travel agencies in the mid-1990s, barely more than 9,000 survive, according to travel research firms Phocuswright and the Airlines Reporting Corp.

“Travel agent” ranks among the top five most endangered jobs in the U.S. today, trailing only mail carrier, farmer, meter reader and newspaper reporter. That’s according to a CareerCast “Jobs Rated” report, in conjunction with the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics.

So why would Cashman jump into the travel-agency world at age 58, after running an employment-services business for decades?

“I like to do a lot of adventure travel – hiking, biking, rafting, zip-lining – and we’ve trekked all over the world,” Cashman said. “We booked a wonderful trip to Bhutan and Australia through Susan Valentino, who’s a Virtuoso travel agent, and we really clicked. I thought we could become a pretty good team. With Susan’s expertise in the business and my hands-on adventure experience, we can offer clients a lot of value.”

Cashman and Valentino are affiliated with The Travel Society, which is a Virtuoso member travel agency; both do all their work from home. Virtuoso bills itself as a luxury travel network, specializing in unique experiences.

Cashman and Valentino have partnered with Centrum, the Port Townsend nonprofit organization for fostering creativity in the arts, to provide several travel packages for its Oct. 16 Gala and Auction.

Adventure Artisans charges a standard fee; for frequent travelers, it offers unlimited travel planning for a flat annual fee.

“Travel agents who don’t charge a fee are motivated by commissions paid by travel providers, so they’ll steer clients into options that kick back money to the agent,” Cashman said.

Jean Gilliland, who ran Jean’s House of Travel for nearly 30 years before closing in May 2015 – the last storefront travel agency in Port Townsend – is working out of her home now too, approaching retirement. She remembers when PT had four travel agencies, three with storefronts.

“Travel has always been a business that had to reinvent itself,” Gilliland said. “The current trend is to go more home-based and work through a larger agency of some sort."

Cashman wants to provide that service here. To learn more, go to adventureartisans.com or call 316-9785.