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Becoming a Home-Based Travel
Agent, Part 2:
The Home-Based Travel Agent revolution Begins
Copyright © Kelly Monaghan,
http://www.HomeTravelAgency.com
The "traditional"
travel agency was a place where people came
to place orders. That began to change in the 90s due to a
number of related trends:
SMART MARKETING
Some clever fellow
decided he could make money marketing the
"romance" and "mystique"
of being a travel agent, or more
specifically the travel benefits that (in theory) came with
the mere fact of identifying yourself as a travel agent.
This notion was copied
and very quickly there were any number
of travel agencies working a high-powered and sophisticated
twist on the old bird-dog system. "Be one of our outside
independent agents," the pitch went, "and refer business to
our inside agents. In return, we'll give you a small
commission and, best of all, a photo ID card that proves
you're a travel agent and that you can use to get all sorts
of discounts and other goodies."
This marketing approach
has met with varying degrees of
success on its own terms. What is less in doubt is the fact
that it has been extremely controversial within the travel
agent community and vigorous efforts have been made to
put an end to
it, thus far to no avail. Although this may change in
the future, the current situation appears to be that, while
what these travel agencies are doing (and they have to be
bonded, accredited travel agencies to do this!) may anger
other travel agents, it is not illegal. These agencies call
themselves referral agencies; their critics call them card
mills. Whatever terminology you prefer, they seem to here to
stay.
THE RISE OF THE
PERSONAL COMPUTER
Employees of travel
agencies were for a long while the most
computer-savvy people to be found outside academia or large
corporations. When personal computers started popping up everywhere,
just about anyone could do what travel agents did if they had the
right software.
IMPROVED COMMUNICATIONS
It's hard to imagine
now how recent and revolutionary the
introduction of the fax machine was. In retrospect, it had a
profound effect on the travel distribution system with its
ability to transmit bookings quickly and accurately. Now, the
Internet is replacing the fax as a means to quickly send and
receive data.
COMMISSION CAPS AND
CUTS
Then the airlines
started cutting travel agents' commission
rates and limiting the amount of commissions they paid at
those rates. Airline tickets had never been something that travel agents got rich on, but they were steady and those
first and business class tickets paid very healthy
commissions. Now the airlines were dropping agents' pay below their
costs. In other words, many agents were actually losing money on
every
airline ticket they wrote.
Today, most airlines
pay zero commissions on base fares.
However, many agencies do receive some commission income based
on
volume.
A lot of agents started
asking themselves some hard-hitting questions.
"Why am I carrying
all this expensive overhead
just to please the airlines when the airlines are driving me
out of business?" A lot of smaller agencies closed, some to
go out of business forever but many to reopen as home-based agencies,
freed from the heavy financial burdens of a
storefront agency and also free to spurn the airlines that
had spurned them, free to concentrate on selling higher-priced, higher-margin products. Many agents who took this
route saw a dramatic increase in their take-home pay.
As we enter a new
millennium, these intertwining forces have
combined to create a true revolution in how travel products are
distributed. If the twentieth century was the century of
the travel agent, the twenty-first will be the century of the
home-based
travel agent. Home-based travel agencies are
opening up at an ever-increasing rate, while the number of
storefront agencies has been declining every year. The home-based
agent can be a seasoned storefront veteran or a newcomer, but both
are in the same boat. They are entering a brave new world of travel
marketing that is very different from the traditional storefront
model.
To succeed in this new environment requires new strategies
and
new skills.
In our next lesson, we
will take a closer look at this "new"
home-based travel agent. Lesson Three
This mini-course on
becoming a home-based travel agent is
brought to you by the Home-Based Travel Agent Resource Center
and The Intrepid Traveler, publisher of a comprehensive home
study course for home-based travel agents.
For more information,
visit
today.
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