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Help! I am hoping to get some professional advice from those of you in the Travel Industry. Travel has always been my first love- not just travelling, but spending the time researching and planning the trip. I'm wondering if there is still an opportunity to make money doing this. Doing this work for others would be a labor of love for me, but it would also have to pay the bills. Thank you for any advice you have to offer!!

I understand your passion. However, the pros have been dropping out of the business for years because they cannot make it anymore. It is a great hobby, but keep your day job.

Don't agree - you can make a living. Travel agencies are always looking for experienced, qualified leisure agents. Either by salary plus commission or commission only (50-70pct of net received). There are many people remaining in this world who respect the services of a qualified travel professional.

BethM, I respectfully disagree. I believe that I know my wishes and desires better than any travel agent and that I can put a trip together for my husband and myself better than any travel agent can.

<<There are many people remaining in this world who respect the services of a qualified travel professional.>> <> I don't think that there is any contradiction between these two statemens. The world is full of both kinds of people with those viewpoints. But I think it is true that the airlines have put some of the best travel agents out of business. So be prepared to work for less money than you might imagine - - and compete against the creme de la creme who have survived the current (and worsening future) hard times - - very experienced, business-savvy types who also love it passionately. Best wishes, Rex [email protected]

This is a difficult problem worldwide. Airlines do not want to pay commissions. Travel agents must work quickly. They can't spend all morning working on one trip and gathering tips and summarizing guide books. I think the future is for travel agents to work for large companies (or for large companies to have their own travel department) and for a few travel agents to book either cruise tickets or to charge people a fee to book airline tickets. Travel agents may understand the problem better but that is my general impression.

Hi I think there's a niche in the market for any service, if it makes itself available to the right people who are willing to pay the price I can't help but think that there are some very busy, very well-off people who would be willing to pay their own fees to have a travel consultant thoroughly research a trip for them. Specific, custom-tailored trips, like bike riding in Tuscany followed by a week at an Italian spa. Corporate travel departments aren't necessarily any more skilled or tuned in to client needs than any other average travel agency, and are even less likely to have traveled much themselves. I also suspect that anyone who has a computer at home, and who has the skills,could provide such a service. What I have no idea about is how to market such a service, and if there is enough demand to make a good living at it.

I have two friends who have had to close agencies they ran for years due to the overall decline in available revenue for general travel agents. they both said that there was an ongoing trend of people asking for their services so they could compare it to what they had already found on the internet with no intention of letting the agent get a commission. of course, the mention of a fee paid in advance for research never got a positive response from the client.

I forgot to mention that planning a trip is half of the fun for me. I can't imagine turning that over to somelse.

I better turn my spelling over to someone else. I need more time to edit.

There is room for travel agents in todays world though as mentioned in other post they are struggling. I have a terrific agent who I use to compare quotes. She always suggest I do my homework first and then bring quotes into her where she trys to match.Sometimes I win sometimes she is cheaper even with her $25.00 charge. I am retired so have lots of time to kill and search for prices. Good luck sonodust

These are rough times for us. I have been a travel agent for 15 years, 2 in vacation travel and the rest in corporate. Last year I was laid off and have been searching for a job for 6 months now. Although I have done a lot of destination experience from all my personal travel, the vacation agencies are not hiring me because they feel I am not qualified enough. It's not enough to just know about places-they want you to know their computer system and have experience selling to people, and know all the ins and outs of the various travel suppliers. I finally got a job in corporate travel, however it's part-time and at a much lower salary than I had before. I have 15 years in the industry and others like me have more and we're not finding jobs. The competition is stiff.

Thank you all for your thoughtful advice. Unfortuantely, it seems that my concerns were reinforced by your posts. Let me make one clarification. One of the reasons I think that many travel agencies have gone out of business is that so many of them have become "Trip Bookers" not Trip Planners. They make their money by selling the packages or tickets that we can all get ourselves anyway. It seems that there are so few travel agents these days who take the time to do real research, and come up with custom itineraries, or can tell you about a truly special hotel, resort, or village. Those are my thoughts, anyway. Thanks again!!!

lynlor; I agree with you that planning by yourself is the best. However, as you have read in many of the postings on Fodors, there are more than enough people out there who do need a lot of help. I wonder if some of them can find their way to the local sore sometimes.

sonodust; I understand the joy you feel doing the planning. It might be worth a try advertising as a custom tailoring type of travel consultant. Take a shot at it. Who knows? You only live once, after all.

Since the Marvel of the internet I became my own travel expert and do all the planning and booking myself..Sorry sonodust one of these days the travel agency will be a thing of the past..

The agent I used to book our British Airways tickets through wanted to charge us one third more than the BA website rate[and the BA site gave us paper tickets at no extra charge]. She muttered something about being "safe". Forget that. Also, I never found any agent who wanted to take the time to find any but expensive hotels that gave them a good commission. Now I do it all by internet and telephone.

always amazed by the badmouthing of travel agents as a profession on this chat room.

Operaman, It's true there are a lot of people who need help, but they would get better and generally unbiased first hand advice by going to travel forums such as this rather than going to a travel agent. Most of the agents that I've dealt with aren't very well traveled and usually haven't been to wherever it is that I want to go. That's not saying that there aren't destination specialists out there with extensive knowledge and experience, but that doesn't seem to be the case with the majority in the travel industry.

Bethm, Not sure if what I just posted qualifies as 'badmouthing', but I am unfortunately speaking from direct experience as are, I suspect, a lot of the other travelers on this forum. My last attempt to use a travel agent was actually someone that posted on this board. She lived in the destination that I was interested in and often posted about all of the little known or out of the way places she supposedly booked for her clients. I thought great, finally someone with some first hand local knowledge. But when I contacted her with my dates and travel requirements, she emailed me back with quotes from 3 tour packagers! Had I wanted to purchase some generic trip from a tour packager, I could have easily done that myself. I could have also put together all of the same components that were in the tour package, separately for less money myself. I emailed her back and never did receive a reply.

Patty; I agree with you, but there are a lot of people who just can't seem to manage. I wasn't advising sonodust to become a hack agent. It seemed to me that she would like to try tailoring trips for people who have a need. You never know? Sonodust might be able to make a go of it. If he/she really wants to do it I would of course hope that she/he does all of the necessary research and had actually been to the places that are in the trip planning. Like you I find real pleasure planning my excursions myself.

I used to work for one of the UK's largest tour operators for almost 5 years. I left about a year ago. I would say the following, though this applies to the UK market, as I don't know about the US or elsewhere. These days the majority of travel agencies are owned by huge firms that also own one or more tour operator. Agencies are awarded different commission rates for selling the same holiday - and this depends on volume sold. For example my company might give 12% commission to an agency that sold 1000 customers one of our holidays but only 8% to agencies who sold less than that. It was referred to as the preferred agency scheme. This means that the smaller independent agencies find it harder to survive. The ones that do survive are the ones who tend to tie themselves in to one or two tour operators in order to be able to sell sufficient volume of their holidays to get the higher commission rate. The chain agencies tend to be very much just booking services. Their staff are paid pretty poorly (even taking into account commission and travel discounts) and are therefore often inexperienced and untravelled. Customers who want a high level of trip planning from an expert tend to be disappointed with these agencies and not to use them. The less they are used for independent style bookings the less they are able to secure bulk discounts with airlines and hoteliers that they dont book regularly. A separate point. Most travellers who do want more than a basic package holiday to the beach or an organised tour are pretty savvy now about prices and possibilities. Even if they use a travel agent to help plan a trip they soon realise by researching on their own that they can book the same trip for less. Once upon a time it was less easy for customers to be able to get info from an agent and then book the same trip themselves. What this boils down to is that it really is hard to make it as one of the more expert independent agents. Your target market is much smaller than it used to be - it's those who are rich enough AND also not likely to notice that they can price the same trip for same or cheaper themselves. Another option is to look for a regular job within the travel industry. For example I was an IT Trainer working in the head office of my company and learned about and trained staff in all departments and also out in resort offices. There were many many jobs that were not specifically travel related - HR, Finance, IT etc. Kavey

what are your credentials? we may find a need for your skills.