should i become a travel agent?
 

my company uses a travel agent that charges 7-8% on top of ticket price as a service charge.

one department spends about 200k on travel and has offered to let me become a travel agent and book all their travel and keep the 7-8%.

they are fedup with their current agent and know that i "like this stuff".

what would it take for me to do this?

become a travel agent?
be able to price out tickets and book them?

i thought about just using expert flyer and book the tickets online with the carriers (we do not have a carrier of choice). but many times we put tickets on hold for 24 hours and not all carriers can do this but travel agents can. (this is what the department head told me)

Thanks in advance

Well, that's $15K. Not enough to live on. Is this in addition to your current job? Would you do it on company time, or after hours? How many trips does that $200K represent?

this would be in addition to my current job and it would be done on my own time.

the 200K is all domestic but many trips are for 4-5 people on the same itinerary

have you looked into the cost of Iata membership and GDS access?

no i don't even know where to begin that is why i am asking here i am sure some members of the board have explored the possibility.

does any one know the cost to subscribe to a gds & iata?

Does anyone know how to use Google?

This would be a bad move.

Good travel agents are on call 24/7. When a travel agent is really needed it's always an emergency - you would be expected to work magic for people who themselves would be under pressure.


$15,000 a year less taxes? What a deal your company would be getting!

If you know the people you will be booking travel for, and you don't work miracles, what happens to you?

And since you may know some of them of course they will expect that you can "do them a favor" once in a while and book travel for a spouse or family member.

Helluva lotta risk for little reward.

So your firm would be happy to have a travel agent only working their spare time ?
how would this work when urgent changes need to be made and your real job made you impossible to contact or unable to instantly make the needed changes? Who would be financially responsible for booking errors made-would you pay up or would the company ? What would happen when your job and this extra job directly conflicted? how about vacation time or if you are sick ?
Who will pay for GDS instalatiion and training ? What about the IATA financial bonds ? IATA usually ask for two years previous accreditation before issuing a licence too-do you have this ?
There are good reasons why most companies outsource their travel booking-some practical and some cost related. It isn't impossible but it isn't straightforward either you need to do a lot more research.

this was good info
thanks

and to the other poster google has a bunch of info but i was asking for people have have first hand experiance with this

I once took a Learning Annex course on this back around 1991. The instructor was enthusiastic and really wanted to get people in (not getting any financial benefit herself that I could see, other than paid for the class). But even though I wasn't terribly happy with my job at the time (had a bad new boss replacing a good one, and the economy wasn't good), I couldn't stomach the 60% or so pay cut I'd be likely to take. So I didn't pursue it. Doing the FF-maximization became my alternate way of seeing the world.

Seems like almost all the news in years since for travel agents has been bad. One commission cut after another, airlines deliberately disintermediating them to try to get people to book directly on the Internet, then airlines getting burned themselves as the information access and LCC rise hammer margins. Much better to work in a growing area than a shrinking one.

I have an IATA card but it is registered in a foreign country as it is less red tape doing it overseas then inside the USA. You can PM me if you want more info on IATA, how I got my number, and such.

This is all true but there are options the person can have like going TIDS IATA at first over straight IATA which solves the bonding and accredidation and such. But being a TA is or can be a major PITA; however if you work in a niche market that is set up simple and requires little time or effort (plus having the bonus of a built in client to start), plus the benefits of having an IATA card are pretty good. With my card I can save over 5 K per family vacation (a two week trip, two condo's in Waikiki or WDW) plus if you work it right you can really maximize the amount of miles in your own FF account and such.

So while I agree it's not right for 99.9% of the folks out there and I definitely wouldn't think of it or suggest it as a career or for a career change (the WWW is killing the industry unless you specialize, as it definitely is NOT my career or what I would even call one of my jobs or functions) it can be made to work once in a while as a secondary income source or for folks up into retirement or as a part time job etc... Doing a 250 K account does not mean it requires a lot of time, that size of an account is super super super tiny. And there are a lot of companies that would pay for some personalized service. Hook up a few size accounts like this and get a good set up going and it would not take that much work or time, mostly just always having cell contact around the clock and a computer available around the clock and once the "generals" get decided and set up or I should say the normal requirements of majority of the trips it would take a couple of minutes to handle most situations.

So don't turn away from doing something like this, but don't jump into it heads first. Look at it and study it first.

"on your own time"?
 

All of my travel arrangements are done durng business hours and often cannot wait until after business hours because I need to travel tomorrow or sometimes even today. If you are truly expected to do this on your own time (interpretted as after hours) you could be setting yourself up for rapid failure.

I'd be very wary of doing it as a second job within existing employment. If something screws up (like the CEO's own flight) even through no fault of the booker it could have ramifications on the primary job. Not applicable in all situations but not a scenario to be ignored. I've worked in corporate travel and have seen situations like this arise and it isn't pretty.

Get a paper route. more money, less hassles.