How to Become a self employed travel agent or work from home travel agent

Being a self employed or work at home travel agent is a dream for many people, but how do you go about it without spending a ton of money to get yourself up and running? There are a few ways to work from home in the travel business, that are low cost and realize your dream of being a work from home travel agent.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. The biggest thing that scares people off from being a work at home travel agent is cost, but this does not have to start out as a large investment. If you were to go out and open an office, apply for all of the memberships, and furnish and advertise your office, you would be looking at thousands in start up costs. One way to avoid that is sign up with an online travel company. There are a few direct sales, similar to avon, that will set you up with a website to sell travel and give you membership credentials in the accredited agencies. These companies do require an intial small investment, and will depend on you to sell and advertise you new venture.

2. Another option is to work as an agent for a host travel agency. You can search for hosts with google. Each offers training, the ability to book online, varied commission rates, insurance and some include business materials. The cost is usually low, but you may need to committ some of you own money to the advertising. Such as a website and business cards – which can be had for as little as $25. You will want to evaluate each host agency carefully to determine which will work best in your circumstances.

3. Still a little worried? You can try just selling for your local hotels to get a feel for the business or start your own meeting or event planning business. Working directly for a hotel is a great way to learn about the travel business before jumping in or working as a meeting planner. Or try being a consultant to friends, family, neighbors, local non-profits. You can do the booking and shopping for them and arrange everything. This is a good way to get a sense of your refund times, customer complaints and praises, how to deal with reservation systems (even simple ones), how to fix mistakes, and more. And these people may be a little more understanding than your first customers.
   
   
   
   Finally, you may want to consider enrolling in a course that introduces you to the travel agent field. You can learn the day to day workload and issues and determine if you would actually enjoy the job.

Resources

• Trip It Itinerary builder

[mbailey18]

on 9/22/2009 I am really going to look into this. Thanks for the ideas. 5 stars and my recommendation.