how to become a travel agent
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
• Maybe someone has a great circle of relationships and people are always coming to them and they say, "Why shouldn’t I get paid for doing all this research? I like doing it, but I could be making money." A lot of people get into their 50s and say, "You know maybe I’ll just start this as a part-time thing." Some are very successful at it. They can balance more than one life simultaneously. … If you have a family reunion and you have an affinity with travel, you will start talking to hotels, you will talk to airlines, resorts, maybe transportation systems.
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The school root
• There are some travel schools out there. I don’t think that’s a good place to get training necessarily. That’s how a lot of people have started, but then they were able to go into a brick-and-mortar and file brochures, write tickets. There are few places to do that these days because so many brick-and-mortars are no longer available. "When I left the airline, I thought I knew travel. I knew nothing about travel," Smith said. "I knew how to get people on and off airplanes. It’s a totally different world."
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Knowing what you sell
• It’s learning about a place and being effective in communicating about the place. … I have a wholesale business, which means a customer and/or another travel agent will call me and say, "What do you know about Costa Rica?" I have a guy I work with in Costa Rica. I send him a profile and budget. Here’s the time frames, what the clients are thinking of doing. He will come back with an itinerary. Then I go back to the client and say, "Here is what we can do." …
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Getting right
• Find the honest, reputable organizations that will support you. Because if you don’t put those pieces together and it falls apart you better be prepared to make it a positive. Until you’ve had to do that it’s overwhelming. I had a guy this last week where the hotel dates got messed up. That shouldn’t be his problem. Even though it cost me money to fix it, I still retained the guy as a client.
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The value of credentials
• Travel professionals can earn a slew of credentials to enhance their reputation, such as certification from the Cruise Lines International Association, which is important if you want to specialize in cruise packages.
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Finding business
• That's the question every business is trying to answer. There's no silver bullet, and everybody has their own style. "I do mailers, I do emails, I do trade shows, I do consumer shows," Smith says. "It takes a lot of energy to garner people around. It's about relationships and referrals."
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