-
I’ve been thinking about the idea of becoming an independent travel advisor (mainly hotel bookings). I have found myself helping others with their travel bookings and trying to get the best deal and really enjoy it. I’ve been thinking that I may as well try to make this a side hustle and secondary benefits would be that I could book travel agent rates for my own trips. As I understand, you need a minimum amount of bookings and there is a ratio between personal vs professional bookings so it may not be as good as it sounds (?)
The comms are roughly 7% for hotel bookings so requires quite a substantial amount of bookings to really make a financial impact.
Appreciate people’s thoughts if this is something worthwhile pursuing.
My advice is that you’ll never know until you try. Best part is that it can all be done online too, so you can kickstart it whilst keeping you current job then one day hopefully replace the main income if it’s successful. If not, it can be some good side income and maybe even pay for your own holidays!
I would definitely encourage you to give it a go
Things I have learned:
*7% is actually quite a lot given the sort of bookings that go through – I just had a look at our ‘Emyr’ statement for May and the highest booking was $5,300 and we often get five figure bookings (Virtuoso pays 8% I think, with Virtuoso keeping 2% of the total 10% paid out)
*it is far easier if you have a lot of wealthy friends because the hard part is NOT making the bookings, it is getting the clients, and (as per above) you want the sort of people who will be spending £5,000 to £20,000 per booking
*the actual work itself isn’t too complex as long as you try to make it ‘execution only’ – luckily the way that it works with the Preferred Partner benefits makes this easy, you can tell your friends ‘work out which luxury hotel in XXXXXX place you want and then give me the hotel and dates and I’ll book it for you so you get extra perks’. No real selling required, it’s a no-brainer for them.
*it is a very full on job – you’ll be getting contacted by clients 24/7 and you’ll be contacting hotels seven days per week to check that special requests etc are being done
*perks seem good in terms of freebies once you start driving volume and at some point you’ll be able to work directly with Four Seasons etc as a preferred partner and so get to keep the 2% that Virtuoso would otherwise get
I do it and combine it with a full time job, but as Rob says above the real skill/hard part is getting clients. I’m lucky in that I’ve had a few very decent jobs in my time so have plenty of people who trust me and are prepared to put bookings of decent value through my agency. Hence haven’t had to advertise. I can also usually get hotels far cheaper than the big sites for clients – often substantially less especially at the top end. Most of my colleagues who are successful either have lots of contacts or have found a particular niche.
The benefits to yourself are also very decent, I was lucky enough to win a £15-20k holiday to the Maldives but that’s obviously unusual! But there are substantial discounts at hotels etc (I got an upmarket Marriott at a third of the public rate and could have sold it for half the public rate and still made a substantial profit), and recently went on safari at a fraction of the commercial cost.
There are several companies around, some are expensive and there is one particular one you should not go with under any circumstances. Do feel free to drop me a line at nigel@gingertravel.co.uk and I am happy to have a chat about the pros and cons.
Thanks all for the insights and encouragement. Will drop you a line Nigel! Cheers
The obvious follow up question, and I’m sure it’s a nonstarter but I’d like to know why:
What is stopping someone setting up as a travel agent solely for their own purposes of getting good deals on hotel bookings?
Some feedback on the OP – a friend set up a travel business with a colleague of his a while ago. They were already ‘in the industry’ so had some good contacts. They were just about turning a profit after three years graft when Covid came along, and have just about recovered to the same position now. Now perhaps they’re just not very good at it, but it doesn’t seem as easy as it potentially sounds.
It IS as easy as it sounds if you have the right personal contacts.
To make £50k at 8% commission means annual hotel bookings of £625,000. Is that a lot or not? The smart way is to start a luxury hotel blog and use the reviews to drive booking enquiries.
Some readers will remember stuff we have reposted from my mate Tom who write The Good The Bad and The Luxurious blog. Tom is a wealthy man from his IT company and wrote this purely for fun to rant about the places he went to, but it is now seen as the global leader in private island reviews. His wife set up a travel agency to process bookings and (unsurprisingly, given 10% commission on bookings that can reach £500k) it is insanely profitable.
@nigelhamilton can you say or hint which is the one to stay away from?
@nigelhamilton can you say or hint which is the one to stay away from?
Not sure if we’re talking corporate travel agents here, but one I (and many friends) have had the misfortune to have to use at various companies has a very bland colour in the name 😉 They were blatantly inflating the prices for hotels and flights with no apologies or shame when you challenged it with black and white evidence that they were doing so.
Thanks @nigelhamilton
No, I came across the independent travel agent business opportunity recently and have been looking into it. It looks positive and doesn’t have a bland colour in it’s name… 🙂I’m not going to mention the name on here, at the risk of being sued for libel (although as a lawyer, I’d argue substantial truth!) But @meandthekids do feel free to drop me a line
@NigelHamilton, I’m also going to drop you a line – hope that’s OK. I looked into doing this pre-Covid and I’ve been thinking about it again recently. I have a few friends who spend 10s of thousands on hotels every year and they’ve previously asked me if I couldn’t set up as an agent and sort bookings out for them. At that time I thought not but now I’m heading towards thinking of retirement in a few years, this might be an option to help supplement my pension.
Not sure if we’re talking corporate travel agents here, but one I (and many friends) have had the misfortune to have to use at various companies has a very bland colour in the name 😉 They were blatantly inflating the prices for hotels and flights with no apologies or shame when you challenged it with black and white evidence that they were doing so.
If you replace the colour with the name of a king we’ve had six of, do you get a Matt Lucas character from the 1990’s?
I thought I’d give it a go a few year back, as like a lot of people on here, I was booking and helping others.
I ended up speaking with someone I met from my backpacking days and she was so happy for me and helped me set it all up. She conveniently didn’t tell me she was going to get 10% of what I got. I made quite abit early on but then it was hassle getting the money out. In the end, I just cancelled as I’d still be trying to get the commission in the next decade I reckon.
I certainly don’t regret it and saw it as a positive as I tried and I know what I need to do next time and not do if I were to go again.
I worked out I didn’t really lose too much if anything, as I emailed various hotels in the last 2 years telling them I was an agent (and giving them my details) and I was often given extremely good discounts. Whether I was to email them nicely with different wording and still get the discount, who knows.One last thing though, even if someone gives you specific requirements for there holiday and tells you
“Thanks for looking for last 2 hours, of course I will book with you”, you must structure your expectations accordingly as there is a high chance they will go to Hays travel or tui and book a 3 star hotel in a different continent that they asked you to look at.Good luck.
@yorkshirerich from your first paragraph it looks like you were unfortunate enough to be with the ‘one to avoid’. But your second and third points are both right! I do think that however nicely you word a letter, it carries additional gravitas being a travel agent. I’ve been upgraded by six room categories in the past which wouldn’t have happened even with status!
Thank you for asking this – its something I’ve toyed with as well, but always discarded as I don’t have the contacts needed. I wish there was a space for some one who plans stuff for others – does all the research on where to go how to get from a to b, what to do/see but then lets them book it themselves.
Thank you for asking this – its something I’ve toyed with as well, but always discarded as I don’t have the contacts needed. I wish there was a space for some one who plans stuff for others – does all the research on where to go how to get from a to b, what to do/see but then lets them book it themselves.
Isn’t that called the “Internet” ?
Thank you for asking this – its something I’ve toyed with as well, but always discarded as I don’t have the contacts needed. I wish there was a space for some one who plans stuff for others – does all the research on where to go how to get from a to b, what to do/see but then lets them book it themselves.
Isn’t that called the “Internet” ?
@Blindman67 – I think you hit the nail on the head. I’m not willing to pay someone else to make a booking at full price on the premise that I get a few minor ‘freebies’ thrown in in recompense for paying top dollar (and the ridiculous ‘maybe’ upgrade). I am entirely confident that I can get the benefits, plus confirmed upgrades, specific room allocations etc. all at a much lower price. One should never underestimate the value of human contact, so why put an intermediary in the middle?However, I do think that independent travel agents can be very successful if they have an angle and truly add value. I do use agents, particularly when visiting somewhere new, when I perceive that it’s complex and the agent has ‘walked the course’ so can offer valuable advice in structuring and booking a trip. I did this for our first trip to China and still use the same agent to help with some aspects ten trips later.
I used a small independent agent for a trip to Serbia last month – he organised (in discussion with me) a brilliant itinerary taking into account various factors I wasn’t aware of, but most importantly he had a great guide and a network of suppliers en route who really made the trip; there is no way I could have replicated that for myself. Both are adding huge value and I’m very happy to pay for that, but I really don’t need someone to push a few buttons to book a hotel (which they likely know nothing about) such that I arrive there as a totally anonymous guest. It’s all the other bits which are more difficult.
Am surprised commissions are so high, about 7-10%!
That’s on top of all the extra perks provided.
Why can’t hotels provide these packages themselves and keep the commissions? Even when hotels offer these perks, they are advertised at rates above flexible rates!
Am surprised commissions are so high, about 7-10%!
That’s on top of all the extra perks provided.
Why can’t hotels provide these packages themselves and keep the commissions? Even when hotels offer these perks, they are advertised at rates above flexible rates!
Hotels do offer these perks, but they can’t advertise it openly because that’s the deal with the agents, so they can pretend they are offering value to their clients. Hotels play along because the guests are overpaying via this channel. The 7-10% is a lot relative to the effort/value added, but actually quite a lot of up market groups or individual hotels will pay substantially higher commissions to select agents that bring them high spending customers. The 7-10% will get squeezed as too many people are latching on to this and they aren’t really agents or independent travel advisors at all but rather an unnecessary intermediary to be paid off. Serious agents will still get paid quite well. Bigger hotel owners have successfully pushed back on the 20%+ commissions they used to pay to the giant OTAs – that’s down to more like 12% now and will undoubtedly go down further.
It’s a far cry from the early 80s when I helped set up a business/marine travel agency – 9% comm on all air tickets with up to 40% override commissions from a few big airlines, 15% standard hotel comm, often more.
Thank you for asking this – its something I’ve toyed with as well, but always discarded as I don’t have the contacts needed. I wish there was a space for some one who plans stuff for others – does all the research on where to go how to get from a to b, what to do/see but then lets them book it themselves.
Isn’t that called the “Internet” ?
Absolutely, and I 100% agree with you.
The reason these schemes exist is that, in the USA, it is standard practice to have a travel advisor book your trip for you. If you’re wealthy you are about as likely to book your own travel as you are unblock your own toilet.
The advisor then becomes the gateway and the hotels need to incentivise these advisors to push business in their direction, not just via commmission but via extra benefits which can make the advisor look good to the client.
The fact that you can access these deals in the UK is just a lucky upside of a structure designed for the US market. A quick look at the Virtuoso website shows over 7,000 registered advisors in the US compared with 600 here.
When we started working with Emyr 6-7 years ago the number of UK agents was well under 100 IIRC. I think Emyr remains the biggest single booker of Four Seasons Hampshire, if my memory isn’t playing tricks, mainly off the back of HfP readers.
However, I do think that independent travel agents can be very successful if they have an angle and truly add value. I do use agents, particularly when visiting somewhere new, when I perceive that it’s complex and the agent has ‘walked the course’ so can offer valuable advice in structuring and booking a trip. I did this for our first trip to China and still use the same agent to help with some aspects ten trips later.
I agree and in particular I’ve found that booking in countries where I’ve lived / travelled extensively and knowing the details of trains round Europe has stood me in good stead. However, there’s also a much simpler angle. If the public rate for a hotel is (say) £300 a night and the OTAs offer it for £290(plus maybe a personal discount of 10%), the net rate might be as low as £220. So if I can offer it to my client for £250, they’re saving £350, or at worst £77, on a week’s stay, and someone else has done the work for them! You dial that to mid four figure bookings and the maths is easy. I’ve booked a place today(not a big chain), got the client a saving of £800 on the public price and a top of the range room. Everyone’s happy 😊
I’d challenge anyone (with the exception of Hilton or someone on corporate rates) booking a week’s stay at £200 a night or more not to get value out of using an independent agent. It shouldn’t be more expensive to book yourself, but inevitably it is.
I saw this article and thought given the discussion here it would be appropriate to share
Airlines Keep Trying to Cut Out the Middleman. Here’s Why It Backfires.
American Airlines’ move to reverse its direct-distribution strategy shows how some travel agents are here to stayASTA’s spat with American started last year, when the carrier pulled 40% of its fares, mostly related to business travel, from many online booking platforms. It then said it would restrict frequent-flier-mile awards to bookings made on its own website and “preferred” agencies.
Spearheaded by Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja, the strategy was about getting more customers to book through American’s website and mobile app, cutting out all but the largest agencies.
A couple of weeks ago, however, the airline downgraded the earnings and revenue guidance it had given investors in March. Its shares are since down 14%.
Last year, American gutted its corporate sales team, believing that direct channels and well-crafted loyalty programs could cut the need to pay travel-agency fees and woo companies with perks and discounts. Raja emphasized the postpandemic trend toward “hybrid” flying, which involves employees combining business and leisure trips. These are more likely to be booked directly.
The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier said 80% of its 2023 bookings happened through non-legacy channels, compared with 55% at the end of 2019, and that staff cuts have saved costs.
However, American has admitted that the end result, at least in the short term, has been to drive customers away. It will scrap the plan to restrict loyalty miles and oust Raja.
Middlemen can seem useless until you actually remove them.
@Wiseoldman – I think the message from this thread is that many independent travel advisors/agents are excellent, will add value and at the same time save you money, so definitely aren’t useless. Virtuoso agents or programmes like FHR which just book you at the rack rate in exchange for de minimis benefits as a sop for paying that high price are costing you money.
@Rob correctly wrote that the Virtuoso network is really for US travellers who don’t make their own arrangements in the way Europeans do, but those agents do so much more in exchange for their commissions; they are not just flight/hotel bookers.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Popular articles this week:
