This may sound unbelievable, but it happens more frequently that you might expect. Today I made a booking to Dubai for a family of 6 over Christmas and earned £9,638 in commission. That’s right! Just shy of £10,000 on a single booking! I had heard stories like this from people I have met in travel but I never believed it was possible until now. Having just started working in travel 5 months ago, I have been doing well, but the most I have earned on a single booking was £1,800 on a Dubai and Maldives Honeymoon that cost £10,000.

I didn’t even think I would get the booking!

Three weeks ago, I got a call from a solicitor who is married my best friend’s cousin. My best friend had told her cousin that I had started a travel business and should try me out for their annual Christmas vacation in Dubai. The family of 6 (2 parents, 3 kids and a mother in law) travel to the Jumeirah Beach Hotel every year flying on British Airways in Premium Economy. The family book their flights and hotel separately online wherever they can find the cheapest deal. 

They were very up-front about their requirements and said to me that they would only book with me if I could match or beat the best price they had found online. They would like to support me because of the recommendation from my friend Julie, but I had to beat £29,200. I set about trying looking for prices and was able to secure the exact itinerary I had been tasked with for £26,480 through a well known Dubai specialist tour operator that sells through travel agents. This worked out at just over 9% commission which is not great as I usually aim for 12% minimum. However, given the size of the transaction, I would still be earning just over £2,000 after the group’s share was deducted. 

I sent the quote to the client and waited. And then there was silence. 

Blast from the past

I don’t like to chase bookings. I provide a very good service and always stive to get my clients the best deals. If they don’t call me back after I have presented them with an itinerary, I don’t pressure them or do the hard sell. 

Having completely forgotten about the £30,000 Dubai Christmas holiday booking by now, I was surprised to get a call from the lawyer today. When he told me that he wanted to book, I should have been excited, but my initial reaction was that there was no way the price I quoted 3 weeks ago would still be available. I thought I would be open and honest and manage the client’s expectations. I told him that with Christmas just around the corner, the prices would most likely have gone up and getting the same deal may no longer be possible. The client responded with an equal measure of transparency by telling me that the prices had gone up and the best deal they could now find was over £36,000.

Taking on the challenge

Not one to shy away from a challenge, I thought I would give it a shot. I had heard from one of the training webinars the group runs that we have access to local suppliers known as Destination Management Companies around the world. So, instead of going back to the tour operator I had originally got the quote from, I decided I would try and package up the itinerary myself.

The dilemma

I couldn’t believe my eyes. After loading the flights, hotels, transfers and other bits and pieces into the system, the net price I was being shown was £19,562. I had to get up, take a deep breath, sit down again and look at what the system was showing me. There had to be some sort of a mistake. I checked, rechecked, had cup of tea and checked again. The price really was correct. 

Now I was faced with a dilemma. Do I take advantage of my desperate clients who were clearly not intending to book with me and only coming to me as a last resort and charge them £36,000 or honour the original price I had quoted of £29,200. 

The temptation was indeed powerful but I resisted! I was not however going to have my time wasted again so this time I called the client back and said I could get him the holiday for £29,200 and was holding the seats but needed the deposit of £750 per person paid by card whilst I was on the phone or the seats would be lost and the price would go up to £36,000. There was no hesitation and within the next 60 seconds I had £4,500 banked. Two hours later the balance had been transferred and the booking was confirmed. 

Working hard and working smart

I have learned that whilst I have to work hard, I can make a lot of money by working smart. In travel prices fluctuate than currencies and the stock market. There are often huge gains to be made by booking lower prices at the time the booking is confirmed. As a travel agent, I can hold a booking with an airline or a hotel without paying any money but guaranteeing the price. I can cancel the booking at any time without penalty within the defined time limits. So if prices go up, I know that I will not have to charge my clients more. If prices go down, I can cancel, rebook and make a lot of extra money!

Click here for more information and how to join The Travel Partner Group

https://join.travelpartnergroup.com/become-a-travel-agent/

The travel industry is vast and often the word travel agent is used to describe a number of different categories within the sector. There are four main categories that have the time travel agent applied to them and they are as follows:

• Travel agent
• Tour operator
• Business Travel Management

This blog article will help you understand the difference between each of the above.

Travel Agent

A Travel Agent essentially works on behalf of someone else. In the United Kingdom selling travel is a heavily regulated activity. Fundamentally, anyone selling a flight inclusive holiday to a member of the public must have an ATOL license. A travel agent does not need an ATOL license because they will sell on behalf of a principal or wholesaler that does have an ATOL license. The contract is between the customer and the principal and the travel agent earns a commission from the principal. Most principals have set up their wholesale businesses to allow travel agents to create itineraries and set their own markups. The principal will then issue a booking confirmation to the consumer in line with the selling price set by the travel agent. The difference between the net price and the sell price is paid to the travel agent as commission. 

Tour operator

A tour operator will either sell directly to the public, sell through travel agents or both. Tour operators that sell to both the public and through travel agents will generally operate what is known in the industry is price parity i.e. they will not sell directly to the public at a price less than the agent is able to sell the same product for. This ensures that the travel agent can still earn a commission without fear of being undercut by the wholesaler they are selling on behalf of. 

A tour operator must have an ATOL license which is regulated by the civil aviation authority. The CAA is a government department which monitors the financial position of its license holders on a monthly basis. The CAA insures that its members have well capitalised balance sheets and maintain a high level of financial liquidity to avoid the risk of insolvency and financial failure. In the event that an ATOL license holder does fail financially, the CAA will refund any customer of the ATOL holder thereby guaranteeing financial protection for consumers. Selling a flight inclusive holiday without an ATOL a license is illegal and can lead to criminal prosecution and even a jail sentence. 

The tour operator will negotiate rates with hotels, airlines, cruise lines, car-rental providers and other travel service providers. Some tour operators will even buy rooms at hotels and seats on flights in advance to guarantee themselves a minimum level of inventory to sell at a fixed purchase cost. When it gets close to departure date if a tour operator has unsold packages it will sell them at a massive discount to avoid the seat going empty or the hotel room remaining unused. A travel agent will still earn commission when selling these last minute distress packages. 

Business Travel Management

Larger companies work exclusively with a single travel management company. These companies negotiate corporate rates with key hotels and airlines that their corporate client uses most frequently. A travel management company will then organise travel for the employees of their client and build them on a monthly basis for the services. Travel management companies do not charge a mark up on the travel products they sell but rather a service fee for their time. They will also get commission from some suppliers like hotels and car rental operators. These companies will also get override incentives from airlines and hotels who will pay them an extra commission based on the amount of revenue they generate.

Specialist

Specialists can comprise tour operators and travel agents. This is the segment of leisure travel that is most profitable. By specialising in a specific segment of travel such as religious tourism, health and wellness, diving holidays or hiking tours you can target a niche segment of the market and charge a significant premium. Firstly, you will be able to negotiate exclusive rates with individual hotels, cruise lines and other product suppliers that you intend to promote and drive business to. In addition, you will use your specialist knowledge to create complex bespoke itineraries that incorporate the value savings that you know about and that are not readily accessible. You could even accompany your own group tours.

I have chosen to be a specialist as I can earn up to 30% margins on the bookings I do. With group tours that I escort, I earn as much as 45%. I have always loved diving and am a certified instructor. When I got in to the travel industry I decided to specialise in diving holidays. My leads come from my extended network of dive acquaintances and recently I have been arranging a number of school groups. For people who need a little bit more hand holding, I escort group tours to the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, Red Sea and even as far as Australia. I will typically take between 18-25 people with me and typically earn £1,000 per person on these groups.

Travel partner group is not the first business to provide infrastructure for travel agents to set up and run their own business. In fact the pioneer of this business model is a company called Travel Counsellors. Yes- we are happy to tell you about the competition because what we offer is very different. In fact, we need to get this off our chest right now. The following companies all provide people that want to join the travel industry with the infrastructure to be able to set up their new business:

Directory of Home-Working Travel Agencies

You may be wondering why I would want to share a list of every homeworking travel agency group in the UK. Afterall, if I am recommending people to start a travel business with travel partner group, I should not technically want you to know who the competition is. Fortunately, I am not the travel partner group. I just operate my business under their license and therefore can write what I want. 

When I presented this article to Travel Partner Group they did not object to the contents because they believe that the product, service, technology and terms of remuneration that they offer is so far above all of the competition they are happy for people to check out what each of the other travel agency homeworking groups offer. Below is a list of companies in the UK to allow you to start your own travel business or operate as a travel agent homeworker.

• Hays Travel (haystravel.co.uk/careersexplorertravel.co.uk)
• Co-Op The Personal Travel Agents (www.jointhepersonaltravelagents.co.uk)
• Brilliant Travel (brillianttravel.co.uk)
• Holidaysplease (www.travelhomeworking.org)
• Travel Counsellors (people.travelcounsellors.com)
• Independent Travel Experts (thetravelnetworkgroup.co.uk/independent-travel-experts)
• Personal Holiday Advisors (personalholidayadvisors.com)
• Personal Travel Consultants (www.personaltravelconsultants.com)
• Travel Specialists by Advantage (www.travel-specialists.co.uk)
• Simplexity Travel (simplexitytravel.com)
• Not Just Travel (notjusttravel.com)
• Travel-pa (join.travel-pa.com)
• GoCruise & Travel Franchise (https://www.joingocruiseandtravel.co.uk/)
• Inspire Homeworking (https://www.homeworkingbyinspire.co.uk/)
• Blue Bay Travel (https://bluebaytravel.co.uk/careers/homeworking)
• Designer Travel (http://recruitment.designertravel.co.uk/)
• Brilliant Travel (https://www.brillianttravel.co.uk/home-based-agents)
• Travology (https://www.travologytravel.co.uk/travel-homeworking)
• The holiday village (https://www.theholidayvillage.com/careers.phtml)
• Elite Travel (https://www.elitetravelgroup.co.uk/homeworkers)
• Arrive Relax Travel (https://www.arriverelaxtravel.com/homeworking-travel-agents/)
• Vertical Group (http://www.verticaltravelgroup.co.uk/homeworker-recruitment.php)

I am sure that a number of the travel homeworking groups listed above will be upset by what I have written in this blog article. To avoid causing any offence, I encourage you to check out everyone of the franchise travel operators on the list above before coming to travel partner group. That way you will only because someone I am proud to call one of my colleagues if you have examined and then rejected all the other travel umbrella organisations.

Reasons why you shouldn’t join another homeworking travel agency group

There are many reasons why you shouldn’t join other travel agency groups but below are just some of the key reasons:

Snobbery: Most homeworker travel agent groups in the UK believe that you should only start a homeworking travel business if you have experience working as a travel agent previously. These groups turn their noses up at anyone who is new to the industry. There are a few exceptions who do look to bring new entrants into the travel sector but I could count these on one hand. So even if you are accepted into one of these travel homework in groups you will always be a second-class citizen.

Fees: I have never understood why travel homeworking companies charge so much money to their members. Joining often costs many thousands of pounds in addition to monthly fees that are in the hundreds of pounds. A travel agency homeworking group should make money only if the agents make money. The level of fees charged to join and on an ongoing basis should reflect the value proposition and not treated as a cash injection for the homeworking travel group. 

Commissions: Homeworker travel agent groups like to keep a lot of your hard earned money. Some keep as much as 50% with the average across the board being in the region of 60%. I chose travel partner group because they allow me to keep up to 80% of the commission I generate. Even with the 20% that they keep, they invest the majority of that in helping you drive more business and securing conversions when you do get the enquiries.

Training and support: TPG don’t just welcome new entrants to the travel industry they actively thrive on this. It doesn’t matter how little your experience of the travel industry is, they give you the training and the ongoing support to ensure that you have all the knowledge and tools to succeed. I realised that with many of the other travel homeworking businesses, your success is irrelevant because they are earning so much money from the ongoing monthly fees they charge you. Even if you are only doing very few bookings a month, because they keep such a high share of your commission, you will always be profitable for them.

Technology: Just because travel agents aren’t as big as the online giants doesn’t mean that they don’t need the most cutting edge technology. We have invested in our technology to provide you with the level of sophistication enjoyed by some of the biggest online players in the market. This means that you can leverage the power of technology combined with a personalised service to really take market share away from online travel players. When I asked other travel homeworking organisations as to what technology they offered, the vast majority only had a very basic booking management tool. Most bookings would have to be done on the phone with a tour operator. Travel partner group have a system that brings in product and pricing with availability from hundreds of suppliers that allows me to create bespoke itineraries for my clients without having to call anyone. 

For the last eight years since leaving school I have been working in retail fashion. I even before the pandemic I could see that the industry was in long-term decline primarily because of the growing number of online clothes retailers that will be coming ever more popular with consumers. COVID-19 accelerated this long-term decline as more and more people became accustomed to shopping online. As a result of the change in consumer behaviour, it was apparent to my employers that they simply would not be able to sustain the level of expenses they had prior to the pandemic. The consequence of this was that I lost my job the end of September this year when furlough came to an end.

I was one of the lucky ones. Throughout the Covid lockdown period I was still earning a wage and did not suffer financially like so many other people. Because I knew there was a real risk of me losing my job when furlough came to an end I started exploring other career options towards the end of 2020. It’s funny how as soon as you start looking for something, Facebook seems to know exactly what you’re doing. My newsfeed was flooded with sponsored posts on a daily basis telling me to set up an Amazon shop, a Drop shipping website, Spreadbetting foreign exchange, becoming a counsellor, and even becoming a business coach. 

I went down the YouTube rabbit hole watching hours an hours of videos from people who said they have done it all made millions and we are now offering courses (which of course I would have to pay for) teaching others how to do it. What just didn’t make sense to me was if these people were making so much money in their respective sectors that they now had enough time to spend half of the year on holiday sipping champagne then why did they need to earn more money by teaching others how to do what they did. These were clearly not altruistic people trying to do their bit for humanity by uplifting the lives of others.

Discovering travel agents still existed

One promotion did however intrigue me. Travel partner group was encouraging people to become travel agents. My first shock was that somebody was actually encouraging people to become travel agents. I thought the travel agents were nearing extinction and very soon would be a distant memory like the dinosaurs. Of course I knew the travel agents still existed, I just didn’t think it was worth going into a career that wouldn’t exist in five years time. The second shock was the fact that the company was suggesting that’s a career as a travel agent was a viable proposition at a time when travel had come to a virtual standstill.

But something about this promotion intrigued me and drove me to investigate further. Travel partner group we’re not trying to sign me up to an expensive course that cost between a few hundred and a few thousand pounds to learn about how to be a travel agent. The pitch was very simple – become a travel agent, sell holidays and keep 70% of the commission I earn with the remaining 30% going to the travel partner group.  The travel partner group would only make money if I made money and the fact that they were spending money promoting this opportunity and clearly meant they believed people like me could make money selling travel. They would have a vested interest in my success. The fact that they were promoting the model meant that clearly they had members who were making them money.

It was time to explore this a little further.

Travel agents are the future

The first thing that became apparent was the travel agents were going to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Covid pandemic. Travel was one of the biggest growth segments of digital transactions when the Internet started to become mainstream in the late 90s. When Covid struck however travellers who had use the Internet to book their holidays quickly discovered that the big online travel brands were not there to support them when things went wrong.

Many consumers waited for hours on hold multiple times every week trying to get through to their travel provider with no success. Emails to their online travel agent went unanswered and the websites had no self-service tools that allowed customers to cancel or reschedule their holidays. Travel agents on the other hand or per actively contacting their clients, offering them options and then obtaining refunds with speed or rebooking suitable alternate travel arrangements. 

A new sentiment had been established in the market – booking with travel agents was worth it even if there was a premium to pay.

The myth the travel agents are more expensive

In my journey of discovery I also realised the travel agents are often cheaper than the Internet. The perception has always been that the Internet is cheaper for everything but this is fundamentally untrue in travel. The reason for this is because hotels, airlines, cruise operators and a vast array of other providers of travel services carefully control their pricing. None of these providers want online travel companies undercutting them and therefore they don’t offer them a certain type of fare. 

The inclusive Tour (IT) fair is reserved exclusively for travel agents and tour operators. These fares are substantially cheaper than the fares available online because they are combined with other services to form a package. As the fair of the individual product is not exposed, the provider is not worried about being undercut. The upshot is the consumer gets a travel package incorporating all of the elements at a cost which is cheaper than the sum of its parts.

As a travel agent this meant I would be able to offer pricing that was cheaper than my online competition while still allowing me to make a healthy profit margin.

Six months into my journey

I decided to take the plunge in May 2021 and become a travel agent. It is true to say I didn’t do many bookings in the first three months because of the general uncertainty surrounding foreign travel. So I spent my time learning about destinations, hotels, attractions in the key resorts I was planning on focussing on and generally promoting my new business friends, family and their networks.

August of this year was the turning point. Suddenly travel was open and the pent-up demand in the market suddenly exploded. I was inundated with enquiries and was making bookings. October 2021 was incredible. I booked 6 couples on holiday packages to the Maldives alone. With an average value of over £3000 per person and a profit margin of 15%. The net amount I made from just these Maldives bookings was a little under £4000. I was now earning more in a week then I had done in my retail job in a month.

The future the travel agent is looking very bright and I have never been so excited about my work as I am today.