Want to Become a Travel Agent? What You Really Need To Know Before You Become A Travel Agent.

Reason Why I chose NOT to become a Travel Agent.

Wish someone would have told me this information first...

Are you good with negotiation?

What about presentation?

Event Planning?

Organization?

Like to Read?

Are You Good with Numbers or Accounting?

Customer Acquisition and Regular Follow-up?

Like talking on the Telephone to Various Companies and Customers?

Are You Studious?

Are You Accurate?

Are You Patient?

Want to Become a Travel Agent Because You Don't Want to Locate Customers?

Believe it or not, every day people all over the world are looking to become a travel agent. Travel agents, just like real estate agents are made of people who have paid to take courses to learn geography and the details of the ever-changing airline industry.  Once the courses are paid and completed, the new travel agent is out to find their own customers.  It's their business.

However, many travel agent companies do not claim that you need to find customers.  They claim that an expert should be the only person to get paid for travel accommodations.  Meanwhile, travel sites such as Hotels.com and Orbiz are making faster and bigger sales than the average travel agent.

Want to Become a Travel Agent Because You Want to Make a lot of Money?

A lot has been said about the travel business and it seems that there are more travel agents than people who are looking for travel agents.  This is because travel agents make money off of YOUR vacation.  They are looking for people who do not feel like booking their accommodations so they can upsell you on services or charge a fee.  Most people know this... or act like they do.

Take the most recent travel agent salary in the United States for 2015.  Click here for the Indeed article.

Travel agents make on average around $56,000/year or around $15/hour.  The average income of most jobs in the United States and this is not coming in the gate.  Coming in the gate, a travel agent is in the negative because of course and book costs to learn the industry.  There is no leverage involved.  Check with other sites giving salary information and you will find travel agents make less than that (around the $30,000).

In addition, travel agents do not get the perks and benefits they offer to their customers.  The salary indicated is just in commissions because travels agents sell vacations.  If a travel agent wishes to take a vacation, it comes out of this salary here.  

What most travel agents don't tell you is that a lot of the work they do is not paid.  This is because by the time a customer decides they want to go with a travel agent, they have already found a more suitable deal.  Customers who have called travel agents more than likely have done some research of their own and have some ideas in their heads.  How else are they able to tell you where they want to go and when? The preliminary research that the travel agent has done is null in void.  

Some travel agents charge for any type of research they do including flight charges and the most comparable hotels but too often customers are not willing to pay for information they can get for free or they can ask their traveling buddies to do.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.  There are those who just hate to do research such as myself in the confusing travel sites and just want to get to where they are going in a dignified fashion.  This is where travel agents have to compete with travel companies, travel package sites such as Groupon, timeshares, and travel clubs.  All depending on your prospective customers' attitude towards travel, you may or may not get the (one time) sale.

Travel agents compete with travel agents and just because a customer has chose you the first time does not mean they are immediately a repeat customer.  How often do they travel?  Have they used a travel agent before?  What sets you aside from other travel agents?  This means great skill customer acquisition and follow-up, not to mention the background work in setting yourself apart from the rest.

You know we tell the truth here and truth be told, the average travel agent, especially new ones, do not make much money.

Want to Become a Travel Agent Because You Want to be the Expert?

Of course the first place to look in building or beginning a travel business is the internet.  Searches for "travel agents", or "how to become a travel agent" get searched every 45 seconds.  

When searching for "how to become a travel agent", there is a lot of information available, however, the most important information is not readily out in the open for you to see.  Most of the information you find out there will be someone else's opinion.  They are waiting for you to take it without any regards of your own needs.You have to do a lot of digging to find the travel business structure that fits your personal needs as a travel agent.  Are you looking for...

• A blank structure  that you build from the ground up?  A freelance travel agent?
• A company that can house your business and you make commissions from sales?  A job as a travel agent?
• A company that supplies you the vacations packages and you do what you want with them?  This is the way most want to go!

Unfortunately, travel agents do not have it as easy as you think.  They often have to negotiate with customers and companies to get some sort of outcome where the customer will not leave.  Imagine trying to get a customer to a remote island in less than a day with a budget the size of a cell phone... good luck.  This happens often in the travel agent industry and is why people ultimately choose travel agents, for the hard grunt work that may seem impossible.

This is because with the rise of other forms of travel, the average travel agent is no longer the expert.  They just know more than the average traveler.  The extreme traveler may not use a travel agent.  They have their ducks in order. 

With the rise of point systems from credit cards and new airline changes, the average travel agent has to be an avid reader.  The information out there is available to most people.  Anyone can read up one what's happening in the industry.

Want to Become a Travel Agent Because... If You Build it, They Will Come, it's that Easy!

No they won't.  It takes skill in marketing (internet and offline), business, customer service, and a little creativity to become a full-time travel agent.  Not to mention, you may want to brush up on all of the skills above if you are not a 10 on them.  Get ready to read and retain a lot of information.  To find out if you have what it takes to become a travel agent... for real, click here for the Travel Agent Quiz: Should You Become a Travel Agent.

I pondered becoming a freelance travel agent because it seemed they had more freedom in their dealings.  Being very studious myself, and avid reader, one who has extreme customer service skills and who was willing to follow-up with customers soon found all of this information out for myself. I wanted to know if I was really ready to jump into this.  What I found out is that I became confused very quickly because being a travel agent is a business!  There are many aspects and if you are not truly interested, you can fall into the cracks and be in the negative before you begin.

I work in the travel industry now and took the Travel Agent Quiz right before this article.  I just wanted to see if a person who was already in the travel business could be a travel agent. I should be a "shoe in" right?  Here are my results...

Why I Chose NOT to Become a Travel Agent

I found out, a lot of this "information" I don't need to know.  I can rely on those who have done the already and have them build my business for me instead (leverage).  If a customer wants to go on a trip really fast, I just ask the "experts" to do the portion either I don't feel like or cannot do.  Furthermore, I don't have know geography.  I found no one is impressed by the one in the room that can shun all of their travel dreams and extravaganzas with book information regarding airport abbreviations.

It doesn't matter how you enter the industry, travel is a business and EVERY business has to have customers.  Being a travel agent doesn't automatically bring customers because people like to travel.

Even now I have potential customers who ask me to book vacations for them and when going back with the information (whether I found it or not), they have found something else.  So now I charge to do research (whether I researched or not) because I do not make money based on how often someone wants to go somewhere.  It makes no difference to me.  This deters a lot of customers but it keeps me from wasting my time.   These things I have found out WHILE being in the industry.  I did not learn from a book or a class.  

Furthermore, I found, I don't have to upsell vacations.  The price is the price because I don't get paid on how much of a vacation someone buys.  I get paid whether they go on vacation or not.  I once spoke to a travel agent that was surprised that I did not upsell anyone on vacations.  She wanted to see the commissions of my vacations.  I guess some sort of commission portfolio.  She wanted to tell me how I could have made more money from my customers.  I politely declined in that I am not interested in over-charging people for my personal gain.  Personally, I wanted to know how her customers did not realize they were paying way to much for their vacations... maybe they'll figure it out.

Want to Become a Travel Agent?

If you want to become a travel agent please do ample research before you start singing the "expert praises".  It takes a lot of work and dedication the average person is not willing to commit to.  

To find easier ways to enter into the multi-billion dollar and growing travel industry... click here and remember...

Out of all of the searches for "how to become a travel agent", how many successful travel agents do you know?  Are they going to tell you how to claim a portion of their market and become successful to?

Shavonne Davenport is a home-based business owner in the travel industry.  She uses her knowledge and resources to help people discover the possibility of travel through their own personalized business structure.  She has written a free report called "How to Fund Your Travel Dreams" to help those who always wanted to travel or start a business in the travel industry but never thought it  possible.  To get a free copy of "How to Fund Your Travel Dreams", click here.