How to Market a Home-Based Travel Agency

As with any home-based business, you can work as little or as much as you choose. Home-based travel agents can work directly for the public or operate as a conduit between an established travel agency and the traveling public. Other agents still offer both unique trips on their own and travel with the groups. Whatever venue you choose, you'll need to market your travel agency business well.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Introduce yourself to local travel agents and tell them you are interested in working from home. You can work out a referral system and set up a commission structure for your travel referrals.
2. Make business cards for your travel agency and a small flyer to hand out to friends and at functions. Tell them why you are different and how you can help with their travel plans.
3. Build a good website with the information you can offer to clients. Work with an independent website builder to get you the hits you are looking for.
4. Find a niche. When you set yourself apart from the masses, you can easily find your target market. For example, if you put together South American trips for seniors, you can visit senior centers and get email lists of traveling seniors. You might contact the local college to ask if they offer South American studies of any kind and offer the same trips for students.
5. Use classifieds to your advantage. Put small, inexpensive ads in the local paper under the travel listings. Use free ad venues such as Craigslist to post your offerings.

Tips & Warnings

• Beware of offers to get you set up in a home-based business with little or no investment. As with many offers, if sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
• Many companies offering to set you up in the travel agent business tell you that you will get great discounts for your own personal travel. Be careful that you aren't spending more for your savings than you would if you just traveled without that benefit.
• As you do your research online, set up a secondary email address to receive information because you will be bombarded by spams and blasts for a while.