Travel Leaders of Tomorrow

Adding more detail to the last post, you may wonder why an Independent travel advisor would want to affiliate themselves with a host travel agency? While the common term is Independent Contractor, or I. C., lately I hear them also referred to as Independent Agents or I.A. As an independent agent, I highly recommend researching the option of becoming affiliated with a host or hybrid agency. To your clients, you are Travel by Tracy, but when you contact a supplier, such as a cruise line or hotel, you are Tracy, an agent with your host travel agency. Most will not have training for a new travel agent, so you may want to consider investing in a travel agent training program.

In becoming a travel agent, a question to ask yourself is “do you want to be an employee or be a travel agency owner? As a new agent you might think that you should start as an employee and learn as much as you can and then once you’re ready, you will venture out and start your own independent travel agency. * As you start your new travel agency, you will be starting from scratch without a salary and building a new clientele. If you think you want to be an independent travel agent, take the plunge and start there, because guess what?

They might have in-house call centers, or even a virtual call center where their employees work from home offices but are linked to the main office through a network. Most virtual call center agents started in-house and because of their skills and experience are able to work remotely with little desk-side assistance Online Travel Agencies focus most of their sales direct to the internet consumer, and I would venture to guess many of you have been customers of one or more of the larger ones. Finally the fastest growing agency model is the Independent Agency. The independent travel agent is often travelling for work or they are in their communities meeting people and expanding or maintaining their network.

In the travel industry we love to take long names and turn them into acronyms and then pronounce them as words, like a secret language. One of my favorite organizations is the American Society of Travel Agents which in the industry is known as A. S.T.A. and pronounced, “as*-tuh When you are considering a new career in the travel industry and most specifically as a travel agent, there is plenty of on-demand training available. When my job was no longer working as a travel agent, and I began training travel agents, I enrolled in train the trainer courses.