Travel

How to Become a Travel Consultant

Written by Qasim Hussain · 3 min read >
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Imagine that you have an exciting job as travel agent and you get chance to see the world! Isn’t it exciting? It really is because becoming a travel consultant means you open the doors of creativity for yourself. How to become a travel consultant? Here comes the answer!

About a Career as a Travel Consultant

As a travel consultant or travel agent, you get chance of combining your love for travel with one of most profitable careers.

When you become a travel consultant, you can start your own agency and get paid for every recommendation of vacation destination, secluded hotel, and luxurious cruise line from the valued customers.

Not only this but also you learn a lot about hot travel destinations, get exclusive access to discounted “agent-only” travel offers, as well as enjoy amazing deals and offers of traveling alone from the side of your travel company.

Choose to Specialize

Just like any other field, tourism industry is very vast. Either you have to run your own travel agency or are to do job at a public travel company you need to choose a specialization. Here I would like to say one thing that the famous travel agencies offer their consultants flexible hours and lucrative commissions for all successful projects.

Select to specialize in any of the following fields:

  1. Adventure travel
  2. Business travel
  3. Cruises
  4. Golf trips
  5. Honeymoons
  6. Eco-tourism
  7. Luxury travel
  8. Family travel
  9. Spa getaways
  10. Special lifestyles
  11. Winery tours

Get educated and learn new skills

It is true that a travel consutant does not need any special degree. But we recommend that you study hotel management or tourism related subjects in graduation and post-graduation. In case you have not studied any of them, you need not to worry, just learn the skills and get started.

Properly plan the travel

You need to learn how to properly plan the travel for customers. For this you must have answers of a couple of questions:

  1. How travel industry works
  2. How to do client consultations including provision of questions/answers sheets
  3. How can I offer exclusive access to “agent only” discounts
  4. How to advise the customers about all the things that range from cultural diversity to climatic changes in a particular area
  5. How can I develop profitable professional relationship with suppliers of air travel, train travel, cruise lines, car rentals, hotels, and junior tour operators
  6. Is any computer software needed that could help me in planning the travel
  7. How to gain knowledge about visas, travel documents, and other official things
  8. How to book the clients

Getting Hired as a Travel Consultant

Once you have learnt basics of becoming travel consultant, the next step is to get hired by a reputable firm. For this, you can find travel consultant job openings in newspapers, on the job portal websites and social media networks. Track down unadvertised positions and keep on submitting your CV. Initially you may get no interview call but that does not mean you are to quit trying. Here I would like to mention that you need to develop strong job hunting skills within yourself. Sooner or later you will get an interview call. Prepare for the interview and if there is a written test, try to score maximum in that so that your chances of getting hired as a travel consultant are doubled.

Start a Travel Agency or Travel Consulting Business

If you think you are not suitable to do job in any travel agency, then we highly recommend investing some money in your own travel agency or traveling consulting business. This gives you chance to work from your home because you just need to provide the customers with timely consutancy regardless of the fact that you are sitting in an office or at home. An ideal option is that you buy an existing travel agency, travel agency franchise or open a company with a whole-new brand name. Remember that if you own your brand then its promotion is going to take a lot of time and money-investment.

One more thing we would like to mention here is that you can partner with an established host agency or travel company. Create powerful business plan and share with the management of that company. Make them realize that why you are so important to their agency and how you can help them grow this company.

The next thing you need to remember is that the company name you choose for your own travel agency should neither be copied from another company nor it should be irrelevant. Include sample budgets and tour packages on the website of your company. Also you need to have information about the official business matters including insurance, licenses, legal structure, and others.

Get Maximum Number of Clients

Last but not the least we would like to say that getting maximum number of clients is not going to be easy at start. You need to know the ways of how to attract the customers towards your travel agency or towards your travel consutancy services. For this you can learn effective selling tricks and your income will eventually increase.

The focus should be both on expanding the business/services network and provision of quality. If a customer notices that you have compromised the quality he/she will say permanent goodbye to your firm/services.

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