The technology boom has revolutionized the travel industry. Studies conducted by the travel industry have shown that most people will use the Internet to do basic...

Being a travel agent is a viable and exciting career choice because it requires an exuberant personality and real selling talent. Successful independent travel agents excel by...

Before the rise of the Internet, agents would get boxes of postcards or brochures and send them out to clients. Agents had a hard time keeping track of what their clients would...

This graph shows where an agency made its income just 10 years ago. Income was predominately air commission-based. Most of the other income that was generated was...

Our world has changed dramatically since 1996. Airline commission through ARC dropped to zero, in just 5 years. This forced the industry to change its tactics. Another major change occurred with the...

Today, data comes from a wide spectrum of sources: web sites, business cards, prior travel, extranets, multiple web-based shopping and reservation sites, these are just a few examples of the new and...

The technology boom has revolutionized the travel industry.

Studies conducted by the travel industry have shown that most people will use the Internet to do basic research. Despite the vast increase in online research , most prospective vacationers still book their vacation thru real people, usually a travel agent.

The majority of trips that are booked on the Internet are for airline travel. Simple airline flights pay no commission to travel agents. For a home-based agent there is no incentive to focus on booking flights.

Being a travel agent is a viable and exciting career choice because it requires an exuberant personality and real selling talent. Successful independent travel agents excel by sharing their love of travel with prospective clients, which can be contagious to the client. Good agents also provide valuable information about vacations that clients may not be aware of.

Just like any business, you can earn as much or as little as you want. It really depends on how much time and effort you are willing to put into this type of work. Certain aspects of the travel industry are more productive than others. Focusing on cruises; international travel, group travel or other niches can be tremendously successful. Affiliates that focus their efforts to a selective group of vacation packages are making incomes in the mid to high five figures. They are able to conduct their work from home as an entrepreneur.

Before the rise of the Internet, agents would get boxes of postcards or brochures and send them out to clients. Agents had a hard time keeping track of what their clients would receive. The only way to conduct reporting was if clients responded to inquiries. Suppliers tracked productivity or volume by the specific agencies that participated in various promotions.

This graph shows where an agency made its income just 10 years ago. Income was predominately air commission-based. Most of the other income that was generated was really an extension of the air booking.

Every year, air commissions were paid to agencies through ARC. The commissions continued to rise until they peaked in 1996, at $640 million dollars! As an industry, we identified the systems needed to be successful and pursued those systems.

The systems being used were GDS tools. These GDS tools were (and are) great airline commission processing tools. Agents became very proficient with these systems. The agents used these systems to generate and process airline related transactions. In fact, back in 1996 we had a single input world – whatever an agent did went through the GDS and from there to the agency's processing systems.

Data was also treated differently in 1996. Basically we “processed” things. We were very proficient at processing ARC reports, transactions, agent payables, etc. Prior to the Internet explosion, the focus was on processing the data. Having invoices pointing to sales reps (rather than the client) and passive segments with very limited information were fine - they supported our processing culture.

Our world has changed dramatically since 1996. Airline commission through ARC dropped to zero, in just 5 years. This forced the industry to change its tactics. Another major change occurred with the rise in the off-line leisure sector. Today there is $48.3 Billion in off-line leisure spent in North America. These are the travelers, who with all the options and information out there, need the service of a professional travel agent more so then ever – and are more than willing to pay for it!

The systems have changed from the days when we were dependent on airline commission and our systems were processing-based. Today travel consumers want us to know specific information about them, most notably what they like and what they don't like. They demand that we get to know them and earn their trust, to know where they want to go, when they want to go, and what they want to do. Even basic things like what to call them, where to call them, and when to call them are important in this world where our relationships with clients and the ability to influence their travel purchase are the keys to our success.

Today, data comes from a wide spectrum of sources: web sites, business cards, prior travel, extranets, multiple web-based shopping and reservation sites, these are just a few examples of the new and innovative ways travel agents can reach out to prospective clients.

Agencies in recent years have made tremendous efforts to consolidate data to ease the preparation for sending marketing materials. Despite this consolidation the reporting has remained the same. Suppliers still exclusively gather reporting. The suppliers provide summary production per agency over various periods of time. Despite the tremendous advancement made in the industry, agents still have difficulty in determining if clients received brochures and other types of promotional articles.

This graph shows the breakdown of a leisure agencies income in today's travel market. 71% is cruise/tour, and air has shifted from the vast majority, to well under 10% of total income (and for many agencies is 0% of their income.)

In today's new and fast-paced world, it is basically the same job and information that is being circulated. The difference is the system in which this information is handled has changed. Travel agency marketing programs are run on a completely different method. The tremendous advance in technology has created vibrant and dynamic marketing capabilities for members of the travel industry.

The record of clients receiving promotions from agencies is constantly being updated. These frequent updates allow agents to keep track of what promotions were sent to whom. These agents now have the ability to use the data from this research to find the perfect selling points for each individual client.