Secrets
of Successful Start-Up
Home Travel Agencies
Everyone is different and each of us travels his or
her own road to success, but over the years (and in a thoroughly unscientific
way) I have noticed a number of qualities that make for success in
the home-based travel agency business.
Here then are some observations about just a few qualities
that successful agents bring to the table when they start out.
THEY DO THEIR HOMEWORK
If you are not already a home-based agent, the very
fact that you are reading this web site suggests that you like to
arm yourself with all the information available before making a decision.
I regularly hear from agents who signed up with the
first agency that caught their eye. Now they regret it and wonder
if I can point them in the right direction. I explain to them (hopefully
with a certain amount of patience) that I cannot make decisions for
them. The host agency that’s right for me might be wrong for
them. And vice versa. You see, part of doing your homework is doing
it yourself, not having someone else do it for you.
The thing many beginners (especially those with no real
experience of being in business for themselves) fail to understand
is that the sellers of business opportunities are just that –
sellers. Just as the car dealer won’t volunteer that the car
you have your eye on sits at the bottom of the "Consumer Reports"
safety rankings, the ads for a host agency offer won’t volunteer
the downsides of their offer or reveal that a better deal is being
offered by someone else.
Please understand, I am not saying these people are
being dishonest. They are simply putting the best face on what they
have to offer. That’s simply what sellers do. When you start
selling travel, you’ll do it too. I’m sure that if you are
considering starting a home travel agency you have visited at least
several sites offering such business opportunities and I’m also
sure you understand what I’m talking about.
My approach is fundamentally different. I do not sell
a business opportunity. The value the Home-Based Travel Agent Resource
Center and its home study course bring to the market is to provide
unfiltered and unbiased information about how the business REALLY
works and the MANY, MANY different avenues open to you. For example,
very few host agencies go out of their way to point out that in many
cases you do not have to share commissions with them at all!
I am free to tell you that and explain when it’s
appropriate to deal directly with suppliers and how to go about doing
it. And whatever the topic I try to be evenhanded in explaining the
pros AND the cons of pursuing any particular strategy.
If you do your homework properly, you will be in a far
better position to make informed decisions about how to set up and
grow your business. Or you can always do what I did: learn by trial
and error. Take it from me, losing a few thousand dollars by making
a "dumb beginner’s" mistake is a powerful incentive
to do it right next time!
This principle applies not just in the start-up phase
of your business, but throughout your business career. If you want
to sell cruises, learn the cruise business inside out. If you want
to sell the Caribbean, visit the islands and the resorts, poke your
nose into all the hotels, go to the seminars offered by the tourist
authorities and the suppliers. With this kind of in depth analysis,
you can be sure of offering the best product mix for both your market
and your bottom line. DO YOUR HOMEWORK!
THEY GO INTO BUSINESS WITH THEIR EYES OPEN
If you do your homework, you will start your home travel
agency business with few illusions. Another problem beginners have
is that they are dazzled by all the pretty pictures in the host agency
ads. "Be a travel agent," they seem to say "and you’ll
spend your life strolling on a white sand beach with your significant
other." Well, maybe.
Sometimes. I go out of my way to let people in on the
dirty little secret of being a home-based travel agent. It’s
a business. It’s a job. It means actually doing some (brace yourself)
WORK!
If you haven’t read the article "Five
Good Reasons NOT To Be A Home Based Travel Agent," do yourself
a favor and read it now:
Yes those great deals and those special moments exist.
I have cruised free to exotic ports and I have stayed in luxury hotels
for motel prices. I also show people how to do the same sort of thing,
whether it’s a $299 cruise as part of their continuing education
or a bona-fide fam trip. But to paraphrase the old TV ad, "Home-based
travel agents get their perks the old-fashioned way: They EARN them!"
THEY PLAN THEIR BUSINESS BEFORE IT PLANS THEM
You are what you eat, they say. Well you are also what
you sell. If you wind up selling a lot of cheap airfare, that’s
what you’ll get a reputation for doing whether you like it or
not.
I have noticed that successful home travel agents go
into the business with a clear idea of what they want their business
to look like. This mostly has to do with specialization but other
factors are involved as well.
The home-based agent who says, "I offer high-end diving expeditions
to the Caribbean" is more likely to make a go of it than the
agent who says "I sell travel; where do you want to go?"
As I explain in the home study course, being a home-based
travel agent isn’t like being a storefront agent in a different
location. (It can be but it doesn’t have to be and, in my view,
it shouldn’t be.) Once the fundamental differences between the
two sink in, a whole range of possibilities open up.
This part of the start-up process is actually a lot
of fun because it starts with big, no-limits dreaming followed by
a period of rational analysis. If you are just starting out, take
the time to envision your dream business. You can pull some of the
elements out of the clear blue sky, but be sure to balance your dreaming
with your own experience. Ask yourself questions like:
Why do I love travel? What first got me excited about
traveling? What’s my favorite destination? Where have I always
dreamed of going? What are my favorite activities (walking, museums,
tennis, golf, etc.)? This is just a start; I offer many more suggestions
in the course. The point is that, if you have been drawn to this business
out of a love for travel, your ideal travel business probably already
exists inside you, just waiting to be discovered, developed, and defined.
The young mother who has experienced the frustrations
of getting good advice for family vacations will have a better chance
of succeeding as a specialist in family travel than in selling very
expensive opera tours to Italy. That’s just one example. What’s
YOUR example?
Obviously, there are other aspects to planning a business.
Just because I have only discussed one of them here doesn’t mean
you shouldn’t think through all aspects of your travel-business-to-be.
The more and the better you think it through, the better your odds
of making a go of it.
THEY TAKE ACTION
Someone calls it "the paralysis of analysis,"
the danger that you’ll spend so much time thinking and planning
that you’ll never actually DO anything.
At some point (and as screamingly obvious as it sounds), you have
to do something to enjoy success. If you are already up and running
as an agent, that could mean making the leap of faith to promote that
pricey African safari without being 100% sure you can pull it off.
To be successful you can’t be afraid of failure.
You must do your homework (see above) and do everything you can to
insure success, but ultimately every promotion carries some risk of
failure. Chances are that even if you don’t fill up all the slots,
you’ll fill some. And suppliers know that not every promotion
succeeds. If they see you are actively doing the right things, they
will be supportive and willing to work with you again.
If you are just starting out, that leap of faith could be ordering
the home study course and arming yourself with information that could
take you years to amass otherwise. If you think you’d like to
do that, CLICK HERE.
But, please, please, please read "Five Good Reasons
NOT To Be A Home Based Travel Agent" first. I have the best money-back
guarantee in the business, far better than anything offered by business
opportunities that cost hundreds of dollars more than my course. But
nothing saddens me more than people who return the materials saying,
"I didn’t realize how much work was involved."
These are people who clearly would like to work at home,
make some money, and derive some personal satisfaction but with that
kind of attitude, the cards are stacked against them no matter what
they try. There is only one entity in the universe that can make something
from nothing. It ain’t me. And it ain’t you.
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