Travel Business and Operations Guide

Want to learn or put up, operate, and manage a travel agency business?

Introduction:

This blog is created by this site Administrator who has an extensive knowledge on Travel Business operations to provide interested people with some basic information on how to start travel business and its operations in the Philippines or anywhere in the world, or managing it along the way, and learn its tricks of the trade, which could be helpful not only for individuals who are thinking of puting up travel business, but also for those who are already into it, or want to work in the future with travel agency companies, as well.

The writer wish also that this basic information would be useful source of additional knowledge for the owners, managers, or employees of travel agencies on how to increase the volume of their businesses and attain productivity level even during off-season period.For those individual who already have, or have not much understanding or experience in travel business, but choose to enter in this kind of trade whether for business, or part/full time job, they can have now the opportunity to learn the fundamentals and complexities of this type of business.

Many years ago, travel agents do business with their travelling clients in a traditional way. Meaning, they transact and operate business then by doing lots of paper works or telephoning to contact people or would-be clients before a confirmed bookings are finalized. More often than not, with this kind of long and tedious process it merely causes inevitable delays in guests' confirmations to effect their reservations to their preferred hotels or resorts.

Until the advent of the internet way of reservations and bookings more than two decades ago that made the world’s majority of travelling public utilized this type of service which become much, much easier. On the other hand, even if the travel business is starting just a baby without a website to cater to international clients it can also earn local and international bookings and become successful by doing business in many ways, which can be learned through this blog.

According to recent studies, it shows that majority of hotels/resorts worldwide have their own websites being maintained by themselves, especially those in the chain groups of hotels, in which anybody from anywhere in the world could access their properties detailed information and rates without the need of many intermediaries to get instant confirmation of rooms.Moreover, due to the current proliferation of interactive real-time reservation system by way of the internet, it now only requires minimum human involvement in routine procedures.

Hence, a big slice of the travelling public opted to place their bookings via the hotels’ or travel agencies’ internet websites instead of traditional ways for some reasons and advantages; such as: much easier to transact as far as room availability and confirmation, a rates discounts from some travel agencies’ published/tariff rates can be acquired, pre-payment is more secured via credit card because of encryption security method being placed in their sites security payment schemes, and they can also see photos of a wide selection of hotels/resorts and its rooms, amenities, and facilities featured online to choose from.

However, we cannot discount the success of those existing small travel agencies which do not have websites to operate, but still dominate the big slice of the world's travel business pie.

Therefore, whether the travel business you are planning to put up is a retail or wholesale travel business, with or without online reservation system, you can still do better business and gain financial independence in the future, as long as you exercise passion and focus with your goals related to your own travel business. Or, if you just want to learn this kind of business to gain knowledge for whatever good and legal purpose you think is best for you and everybody, you may do so.

Retail Travel Agents

These are the small and medium scale travel agents with; usually, 3 up to 10 employees who depend largely on outbound market. Meaning, local travelers in their country of origin book with them to travel outside, or to other country in particular; whether for business, medical, or leisure trips, or stay in foreign land for good, etc. On most occasions, local residents or foreigners already in the country book through these types of travel agencies to go to local hotels of their choice before going to whatever scheduled personal business they may have to get reservations to the destinations that they opted to visit.

However, aside from too expensive to travel, these kind of travel agents sometime only sell specific destinations acquired from large agents as they could not afford to fly across the world to make deals with foreign hotels or other properties because they don't produce any bookings for these hotels. Most likely, these small agents could not get good rates or rooms availability from foreign properties even they have the resources to spend for travel because they do not have yet to show any previous transactions or sales inputs to impress the management of the foreign hotels.

What they do is, they look for a wholesaler travel agents in their place of origin where their business is located to a have direct contacts and sign contracts with them to buy room nights.They just usually buy room nights from wholesalers and sell to their clients with a minimal mark ups. Although, they have direct contacts with few local hotels and resorts or other properties in their own country where their business is located, they cannot even also acquire good rates from them because they provide only very little productions, or none at all.Some of them may have business tie ups with few wholesalers or host agency companies abroad to buy rooms or packages just to earn few dollars mark ups.

However, at times, these travel agents cannot secure rooms from the said host agents for their guests due to unavailability of rooms to sell, especially during peak seasons. Wholesalers, of course, have also their own retail travel agents to protect which they prioritize first, instead of other new players with no established or long business relationships with them.

Therefore, if you would like to put up this kind of business and you just want to start as a small travel agent, all you have to do is to just talk to local wholesalers in your area and have a written agreement with them, if possible, to buy rooms from them as per your immediate booking requirements only. Next, is to browse from the internet other foreign wholesalers including hotels and ask them via email requests to provide you room/s in the event that you have immediate booking requirements.

Lastly, you may create your own, or let a qualified individual to build for you a dynamic website for a reasonable fee. Then, look for good hotels or resorts and ask a written permission from them if they agree to place the photos of their properties in your homepage site for free and ask for instant confirmation when you have bookings in the future. Or, you can create a blog in the internet of your own for free and post some necessary informations there in connection with your travel business to be able to promote as long as it is in accordance with the google's blogger terms and conditions. It is quite easy to create a blog in the google.com as long as you do the research on how to create a blog after you have sign in with your email address and password, which can also be acquired from the said site.

Likewise, there are more ways to promote your business locally and internationally by way of a word-of-mouth method, design and create a good flyers for your local target market, or search for foreign sites of some leading newspapers or magazines in the web and advertise your business to get more audience by paying them through credit card mode of payment after you agree with their placement advertizing rates.

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Note: The author firmly believed that this blog can help other members who are thinking of puting up a small travel agency business; or, use merely this blog to give hotel and restaurant students some knowledge on how travel agencies and/or hotels operates, in some ways. However, the writer has no obligation, responsibility, or liability on the outcome of your selected business to put up and operate, or the accuracy of its contents.