Group Travel is Big and This Book will Help You Get Started and Find Success as a Travel Agent! Selling Groups is a fantastic way to generate a substantial income for Travel Professionals. "Selling Group Travel for Travel Agents" shares the important details on how to successfully sell group travel and details all aspects on the topic. from concepts, packaging, costing, marketing and operating profitable groups. Grow your Travel Agency with Group Travel by applying the topics discussed in this newly updated book! You will discover: Developing a Group Travel Concept Kinds of Group Travel Developing Your Group Travel Business Plan Group Travel Packaging Group Travel Costing Pied Pipers and Group Leaders Pied Piper and Group Leader Agreements Your Product Presentation Group Leader Marketing Strategies Selling Affinity Group Travel Escorting Affinity Groups About the Authors: The Ogg Family has a cumulative tenure in the travel industry of over 100-years. Their experience and understanding of the Home-Based Travel Agency opportunity, combined with their enthusiastic entrepreneurial spirit, make this title a must read for those looking to either start a home-based travel business or to further their success as a Travel Professional. To Access More Tools to help you get started as a Home Based Travel Agent, visit www.HomeBasedTravelAgent.com.
Selling Groups is a fantastic way to generate a substantial income for travel professionals. Selling Group Travel shares the important details on how to successfully sell. group travel and details all aspects on the topic. from concepts, packaging, costing, marketing and operating profitable groups.
Get Your S.H.I.P. Together: The Wealthy Travel Agent Guide to Sales draws on author Dan Chappelle's decades of experience in the travel sales industry and provides a comprehensive guidebook for new and experienced salespeople alike. His no-BS style and personal anecdotes bring real, actionable advice to life to help readers achieve their sales and business goals. It's not just for travel professionals, either, though it's packed with industry advice.The book covers five key areas:1. The Opportunity-Discover why the next twenty years are the best time in the history of the world to be involved in travel and tourism sales.2. The Wealthy Travel Agent Mindset-Explore Dan's trademarked "Get Your S.H.I.P. Together" approach to building a successful business. Master the Skills, Habits, Inspiration, and Performance and Planning that every salesperson needs to excel.3. The Business of the Travel Business-Learn how to make money selling travel! Develop strategies for increasing brand expertise, find out how to compete with the big guys, get advice for choosing partners, and discover the secret to finding new prospects.4. The Wealthy Travel Agent Sales System-Use this complete roadmap to start selling right now. Developed by Dan over thirty years in sales, the WTA Sales System is a foolproof method for sales, covering prospecting through follow up.5. Why Travel Agents Fail-Avoid the pitfalls in travel sales. Want to know the difference between agents who fail and those who become Wealthy Travel Agents? Dan lays it out in the final chapter.
Empowering Individuals to Start and Succeed as a Home Based Travel Agent for over 25 years! A comprehensive workbook to compliment the Independent Study Guide. This workbook will speed you on your way to opening your own Home-Based Travel Business by helping you discover your opportunities and focusing on developing them. The workbook concentrates on the key areas needed to get through the maze of information and confusion encountered when first starting out. Broken into three separate sections, the workbook first deals with the key concepts in the study course. Over 100 concepts are explored, as they relate to your business plans. This will help you focus on the most important information in the course, as it pertains to you. While the "How to Start a Home Based Travel Agency" is a must read, the workbook continues your critical thinking and education before you begin your journey. "There is so much to learn as an entrepreneur in the travel industry. It's not just about booking travel. It's also about launching your own business and setting it up for success. That is why "How to Start a Home Based Travel Agency" is such a critical resource for those new to the industry, or making a move to an independent contractor status. It is filled with practical tips and real-world advice that can be applied immediately. We value this textbook so highly that we include it in our entry level program curriculum, the TRIPKit." - Guida Botelho, CTIE - Director of Education for The Travel Institute About the Authors: The Ogg Family has a cumulative tenure in the travel industry of over 100-years. Their experience and understanding of the Home Based Travel Agency opportunity, combined with their enthusiastic entrepreneurial spirit, make this title a must read for those looking to either start a home based travel business or to further their success as a Travel Professional. To Access More Tools to help you get started as a HomeBased Travel Agent, visit www.HomeBasedTravelAgent.com.
Become a travel agent and "Combine Your Passion For Travel, With A Purpose For Building A Business!" Vincent Vacations is an award winning travel agency. We have a storefront location in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma with a great in-office staff and a team of over 100 independent travel advisors who work all across the country. A big misconception in the travel industry, someone has to be “certified” or go to school to become a travel agent. You don’t technically need either to become a travel agent. You just need a travel agency to allow you to sign-up and use their credentials to sell travel. Here is where I say...BUT, do you want to work with a travel agency that accepts everyone with 0 qualification requirements? I don’t want to talk bad about these agencies, but in my opinion it really waters down the agency community. It creates poorly trained (or not trained at all) travel agents out in the communities we live in that use our designation as “travel agent” that for example I have sat next to people on a plane and they respond cautiously, “But are you a REAL travel agent?” I know exactly what they are talking about. I am going to go into detail on how to become a REAL travel agent and how to be successful in my opinion. This is how I run my travel agency. We have quickly risen to the top. We are recognized by companies such as Disney Destinations, American Airlines Vacations, Apple Leisure Group, Delta Vacations, and more as a top travel agency in the United States. 1) Find an agency that will mentor you. At Vincent Vacations, we train people that have never been in the travel industry before. I will say there is a lot of misunderstanding in what we do. A lot of people think that because they can navigate Expedia, then they too can be a travel agent. This is not the case. Once a client has gotten to the point of selecting where they want to go, what hotel they want and what dates...putting in the names and birthdates of the travelers is the easy part. It’s something most middle school kids could do. The hard part is helping them select the resort or hotel. Helping them navigate the cruise options or what they should do while at Walt Disney World to know how many days to book. It’s building a rapport with the client so they trust and value your opinion on all of these things. There is too much information out there and people come to a travel agent to help them narrow down their search. Finding an agency that values training and knowledge is KEY. We train in groups. We do an introductory 3 day training with business development managers from hoteliers and cruise lines so the newbies (as we call them) can hear the passion and information from the sales reps we work closely with. Another benefit I see with the group trainings, you start to build relationships with the other agents. They are learning things for the first time just like you. Everyone will likely have the same questions and be at the same stage for at least the first little bit. You start to build this in the training so the group training is non-negotiable for me. I do get a lot of requests to just watch the recorded trainings or sign up without it but then this start of community would be lost. This industry is made up of 2 different types of travel agents. A brick and mortar agent who works full time in an office and an independent contractor (IC). The independent contractors don’t have the benefit of working in an office. The idea of the office, where you can quickly bounce ideas off each other, and learn from each other. At Vincent Vacations our IC team is a community. As part of how the agency mentors our team, we are big on this community with helping each other. We do a weekly team meeting via ZOOM, team building activities, a yearly retreat, awards party, FAM trips (I’ll talk more about FAMs in another section) and we have a private Facebook group where everyone can utilize to brainstorm. 2) Travel where you sell, and share your experience. This can be an expensive job at first. I joke with some of the agents to see what their spouses think of their new job. It can be difficult at first but it’s so important. We are a traveling agency. I put a lot of emphasis on this and when sales reps come to me and say, “how can we get more business” I am always saying, “Take us on a FAM”. A FAM is a Familiarization trip. It is when travel agents travel together to tour hotels or resorts or experience a destination. A FAM trip can be a short weekend trip to Mexico where you see 15 hotels in 3 days or a tour of Italy. There’s not really a specific category but they are so important. When you meet someone and you can speak confidently about a destination it can be a game changer on closing a sale. “I was just in Cancun and I would love to tell you about the airport experience and my top 3 hotels I think you would love when we are working on your trip.” Do FAM trips cost money? Most of them, yes they do. They are typically very discounted. They are a lot of work. I have never been so tired than on a FAM trip where we went from hotel to hotel in the heat seeing every room category. We started taking pictures of the name of the hotel so we could wrap our brain around which pictures are which. When you’re done you’re always so glad you went. You make new friends, build relationships with the hoteliers and gain so much knowledge. Share your pictures on social media. Save some. Share a little a at time. Create albums of your FAMs so you don’t forget and it can become such a resource. You will be glad you did. 3) Maximize Social Media Someone recently asked in a social media group I am in if I let my clients be “my friend” on social media. My answer without hesitating is YES. If you want to be successful, the quickest path and least expensive path is through social media. Picture this…….you book someone a trip to Mexico. You’re new and inexperienced. You might not have shined during the booking process but you did a fine job. Will the client remember to call you in a couple years when they are ready for their next trip? IFFY. If you’re connected on social media will they? YES! Of course not guaranteed but think about it. They start to feel like they know you. They see you traveling for your job as an agent. They see you posting reviews of hotels, other client experiences and treating it as a profession. We also encourage all of our team to build a Facebook group. This is where they can put together travel inspiration and example trips, (we provide the content to our team for a lot of this), people can ask questions and you can run it like a business. Agents with a travel focused Facebook group consistently sell more travel than those who don’t have one. The ones with 2-3k people in their groups have more business than they know what to do with. This only works if you treat social media as a business. What image do you want to portray? Keep social media positive. Keep it lighthearted. Post funny pictures of your kids, your weekend cooking venture and your travels. Do not post your family drama. Do not post politics. Politics is sure to alienate half of your audience. Be intentional. Who do you admire on social media? Why do you admire them? Is it because they complain, post low quality photos and rant nonstop? Of course not. Everyone on your social media is either a client or a potential client. Once you emerge yourself into this thought process you will see an uptick in business. 4) Join a Referral Group Referral groups can be so helpful when you immerse yourself and use it to your advantage. This is where you will refer other members of the group to their businesses and they will return the favor. It’s a great way to expand your network outside of what you already have. If you don’t know of any, this is a great time to start one. This way you can set the rules and expectations. 5) Never stop training. This is huge. This job is fluid. Everything is always changing. There’s always a new policy or even a new destination to learn about. There are conferences that will help you focus on your niche and become an expert. For example if your focus is romance travel then conferences like Love Mexico or Romance Travel Forum should be on your priority list. There are cruise conferences like Cruise World or RiverView Conference if you want to focus specifically on River Cruises. The training is as important as networking at these events. This is where you will meet other agents that also have this focus. Agents with a core group of agents that they can bounce ideas off of are much more successful than those who isolate themselves. Becoming a travel agent has blessed me and my family so much. After the pandemic we joke that it’s not for the faint of heart but as travel returns I have seen the need for professional travel agents more and more. The value has been shown over and over and it’s a profession not going away. We are here to stay.
An entry-level training manual and reference for travel agency managers, this text covers selling techniques, reservation procedures, marketing and selling ideas. It contains updated rules and regulations governing travel agents, and new information on tours, hotels, car rentals, and cruises. For professional travel agents and all those interested in a career as a travel agent.
The travel industry is the big business in the modern world and travel agencies make up an important part of the industry. There are many different types of travel agencies (travel agents), including holiday travel agents, such as Going Places and First Choice, which help customers, choose and book their summer family holiday, group ski break, or city sightseeing tour. But other specialist travel agencies are also available, such as business travel agents, which help businesses and businesspeople plan and book their conferences, flights, and foreign business travel, and location specialists, who will offer expert advice, great deals, and a reliable booking service for certain locations in the world, including Australia travel agents, Caribbean travel agents, and India travel agents. In addition to all this, there are independent travel agencies, such as Trail Finders and Co-op Travel, and many of these specialize in certain types of holidays, such as booking round-the-world trips for students heading off on a gap year, and travel agents who only book cruises or UK breaks. Travel agency is one of the most important organizations in the tourism private sector which plays a significant and crucial role in the entire process of developing and promoting tourism in the country or at a destination. It is a travel agency that packages and processes all the attractions, accesses, amenities, and ancillary services of a country and presents them to tourists. That is why a travel agency is known as the ‘image builder’ of a country.
“Olmsted opens a window into a psychologically compelling world of passion and purpose.” —Harvey Araton, author of Our Last Season: A Writer, a Fan, a Friendship Larry Olmsted’s writing and research have been called “eye-opening” (People), “impressive” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), and “enlightening” (Kirkus Reviews). Now, the New York Times and Washington Post bestselling author turns his expertise to a subject that has never been fully explored, delivering a highly entertaining game changer that uses brand-new research to show us why being a sports fan is good for us individually and is a force for positive change in society. Fans is a passionate reminder of how games, teams, and the communities dedicated to them are vital to our lives. Citing fascinating new studies on sports fandom, Larry Olmsted makes the case that the more you identify with a sports team, the better your social, psychological, and physical health is; the more meaningful your relationships are; and the more connected and happier you are. Fans maintain better cognitive processing as their gray matter ages; they have better language skills; and college students who follow sports have higher GPAs, better graduation rates, and higher incomes after graduating. And there’s more: On a societal level, sports help us heal after tragedies, providing community and hope when we need it most. Fans is the perfect gift for anyone who loves sports or anyone who loves someone who loves sports.
Feeling lost, frustrated, and lacking a sense of purpose is common. Modern lifestyles and stressful life schedules can create a life of routine where there is an underlying desire for something more. The reader will enjoy knowledge that inspires inner contentment and joyfulness as common experiences! The content can transform the way one perceives life and awaken a great understanding of what it means to be alive in this moment
A river cruise is undoubtedly the most civilized way to see the best of Europe; you can relax in the comfort of a small vessel as you glide through picturesque towns and spectacular scenery. But how do you choose which cruise company, which kind of rivership, and where to go? This thoroughly updated and expanded new edition of the Berlitz guide to River Cruising in Europe will tell you everything you need to know about taking a cruise along Europe's beautiful rivers and waterways. The book cuts through the brochures' hype - almost every river cruise company promises you luxury. But what does 'luxury' really mean? The guide gives you unbiased advice on the different kinds of river vessels and the facilities they offer, helping you to make an informed choice. We take you on a journey along Europe's rivers and waterways, describing the highlights along the way - the historic cities and majestic scenery of the Danube, the castles and vineyards of the romantic Rhine, and much more. Also included are listings for over 200 riverships, which are described and impartially rated, so that you can easily compare them and their facilities.
