"Travel Counsellors" - worthwhile or are the majority MLM victims?

[WednesdayWitch]

Have seen quite a few acquaintances setting up as Travel Counsellors, either after quitting/losing jobs or changing up their careers post lockdown.

I'm considering a long haul holiday at the moment, and would love to leave the arrangements up to someone else, as well as take advantage of hacks, tips and discounts that they may have access to.

However, red flags start for me, with their self-marketing. I appreciate this is something they need to do to get a fledgling business off the ground, but there are also calls for other people to come and train, 'mumtrepreneur' cues and it seems like anyone can do this with no training.

What's it all about, and am I better off planning something myself?

Any good experiences or recommendations?

My friend is a travel counsellor. She's absolutely brilliant, she works her backside off to get the best prices and give the best service. She was a travel agent for years before she was made redundant so now she's basically like a self employed franchisee type thing. Not an mlm.

Travel counsellors is the name of the company.

We have family who are Travel Counsellors and they are legit travel agents. They get commission only, and so i find tend to be pricier, but the personal service and the fact they look after every element of the holiday works for me on some of our more complicated trips. Ours is very honest if they can’t beat a deal with a package provider though, and I appreciate that transparency. Can imagine not everyone would be that honest!

MLM. They try to recruit online and are ruthless.

A relative of mine did this. She was a genuine travel agent in that she was given access to a website with various deals as far as I could see and from what her mum told me. But she also was encouraged to sign up other people as part of her team which screams MLM.

It lasted a few months with lots of Facebook activity and posting memes about the joys of working from home and then it went quiet. She has a proper job now (not in the travel industry I might add).

So I vote MLM.

Its Inteletravel you are thinking of. They are definitely MLM and have a very bad reputation in the travel trade amongst genuine agents. Travel Counsellors are genuine, and are normally experienced agents that have decided to work from home.

I think it’s concerning that Travel Counsellors are getting tarred with the same brush as MLM. They are a legitimate travel company.

There are posters on here that are obviously getting mixed up and/ or making assumptions not based on facts. It’s a shame that people are so ready to discredit without actually knowing.

Having said that, Travel Counsellors obviously have a huge PR problem and need to do something about that.

🤦🏻‍♀️

I've gone to the persons IG I was thinking of - they're not part of the "travel counsellors" legitimate company, but they're calling themself a travel counsellor and selling for another (definitely MLM) company!

Apologies I didn't realise that "travel counsellors" was a brand, not a description!

A friend of mine does this. Perfectly legit. She's really good and I have booked trips with her.

I work in the travel industry. Travel Counsellors, as others have said, are absolutely not MLM. They are experienced travel agents and part of a legitimate and well respected consortium. The ones to avoid are Inteletravel, who are inexperienced agents and can earn money through recruitment, ie an MLM.

They are not MLM.

They're not. It's just a brand name. They are travel agents.

We approached a local TC specialist to book a trip to Dubai over New Year as had heard good reviews we wanted for myself and DH to travel on Boxing Day and have three nights at Raffles then for the three "Kids' to fly out on 30th and for us all to stay at Atlantis over the New Year holiday so not a cheap event. Initially she was very enthusiastic promising that this type of trip was exactly the type of thing that TC could excel at, it then took her over a week to price up the trip by which time I had contacted Emirates holidays direct who came back to me within 24 hours and I was shocked to find that TC were over £4000 more expensive than going direct to Emirates!!

@dietcokelime you wont be the only one getting confused. I think Travel Counsellors will need to do something to protect their reputation.

Travel Counsellors are not only legitimate, they were ranked No1 for protecting peoples money during covid as well as winning numerous other awards.
if anyone has any doubts just look at their Trustpilot score.
The OP is untrue and whilst corrected in the comments still damaging.

Actually this thread has been positive for me, I had thought that all of this type of travel agent were MLM, good to know that TC is genuine and reputable

It's a franchise. It's only as good as the individual person you speak to. Some of them will be good, some will be shit.

Not an MLM. My local travel counsellor has 15 years experience and has arranged holidays for me several times. One time there was a problem with a flight change which would have caused all sorts of chaos had we had to deal with it ourselves. As it was, the first I even heard of the problem was when I received a call from her: "there was this big problem but it's all solved now, going to email you the new details".

They're not MLM. But personally I wouldn't bother using one and would just do the research and booking myself.

I work for Travel Counsellors and I used to work for a company started by Trailfinders people. I can assure you Travel Counsellors is much better and definitely is NOT an MLM.
Travel Counsellors employs experienced travel agents who work from home, so we tend to be older and have loads of travel experience.
I have 20 years experience - how on earth are we an MLM??

I’d avoid! Big name travel agents will make sure everything is properly covered

I think the responses are from people who are confusing Travel Counsellors, an established and reputable company with Inteletravel - a relatively new company from the USA that employs anyone and encourages MLM.
Just because we are all home workers does not make us an MLM, we at Travel Counsellors are all very experienced travel agents!

We don't recruit a team etc - in fact we never recruit. You are mixing us up with Inteletravel. We're not the same company. We work from home but travel counsellors has been going for 25 years and we are all experienced travel agents.

I work for an airline so deal with their agents at times. As with most travel agents some are amazing and some are appalling. Choose carefully, read reviews and check their social media (most will post offers often and are very active). They can get great deals if they are good at their job.

It’s absolutely not an MLM!! I have two family members who work for travel counsellors. It essentially operates like a franchise (so they are self employed) and work on a commission basis. By working through travel counsellors, you get access to their booking systems/ baseline pricing etc and when you are first starting out you can get customers via travel counsellors head office but the idea is you build up your own client base. Commission is charged by the agent to the clients for work spent on their behalf. You can also get “educational” trips by working via travel counsellors (which are paid for by the company) and if you do well then you become a “gold” travel counsellor and get free super fancy work trips.

You can actually make a huge amount of money from working through travel counsellors if you do well - some people build up really big accounts and do business travel for companies and absolutely rake it in. It’s therefore not uncommon for some of the agents to work with others or employ others to help them because if you do well it can get to a point where you don’t have enough time to meet the demand - also you need someone to cover you if you take time off on your own holiday. It’s very flexible because you’re basically your own boss and can choose what kind of travel you want to do (eg business travel, complex itineraries/honeymoons, lower budget etc).

Summary: as I understand it, money is made through selling flights/hotels/transfers etc, not by creating a “team”. You would only create a team/work with others if you’ve built up a big enough business that you can’t manage the demand yourself. It’s not like an MLM where you have to invest money to start out and bring people in to invest money (and so the cycle goes on).