Is becoming a home-based travel consultant a realistic career change?

[P6662]

Home worker self employed hayes travel
I've been looking into the job roll i have no experience but willing to do the online training i need a new career at the age of 45 I can no longer do hairdressing because of Rhumatoid arthritis I need something I could do home basesd any advice appreciated thanks.

I have a friend who does this as a Travel Counsellors franchisee. TC is not an MLM, and she has never tried to recruit me or our friends , hard sell, upsell or anything other than the holiday I wanted to start with. It helps that she is personally well travelled. She had to give up her previous office based role due to her family needing her to be at home, so - ideally for 9-5 working people - she works largely in the evening.

I have booked 4 holidays through her now and have had excellent experience. A few times things have gone wrong - planes and overnight trains being cancelled at the last minute in the evening - and she, or her duty office, have helped us - find additional accom, rebook, contact & rearrange bookings “downstream” of where we were on our journey. They have also covered all out of pocket expenses and refunds, seamlessly with no quibble. Eg: when a sleeper train was cancelled at 9 pm they helped us rebook. The only way to complete our journey in time to do what else we’d booked was by travelling first class - they covered these costs. They contacted the car hire company to say we’d be 24hrs late. They booked us an extra night in the city where the car hire place was, because we’d get there too late to collect the car; they contacted the chalet at our ultimate destination to say we’d be 24 hrs late. They were also more cost effective than booking individual legs ourselves in the first place.

Her clients came from local social media, word of mouth etc. There are no “physical” travel agents in our nearest town anymore, whigv had probably helped her a bit.

So is The Body Shop ams they definitely have MLMs.

Body Shop direct selling operations were closed down in 2024. That did include recruiting others into the scam scheme

This is Hays Travel's page on Homeworking.
https://www.haystravel.co.uk/careers/homeworking/

The company does charge for its start up packages, up to £8,000, and it levies monthly charges but I can't find any mention of recruiting others.

Okay well I take it back re Hays being a MLM but it’s a lot to pay out.
OP even so it’s not just booking flights and holidays for people who know where they want to to go. Where would you get your leads from? How would you market your business? Are you well travelled? Can you advise someone on best route around NZ and where to stay? Can you tell a couple who like hiking where they should holiday in Greece? Are you happy to help people when things go wrong? And really wrong? My MILs agent had to find a way to rebook her on a return flight from Australia when she didn’t want to go Emirates any more though Dubai. She worked overnight to get her a cheap deal though LAX and JFK within the specific period she needed to leave and shouldered the Emirates canx cost herself until Emirates refunded (3 weeks) as MIL couldnt afford the extra cost. Could you rebook all your clients flights if There was a large scale canx incident? It’s not easy work for £8k layout before you start and small amounts of commission

Edited to add. Earnings on that flight for my MIL would be about £30. So that agent worked into the small hours for less than minimum wage.

@benten54 actually I quite agree. It is a lot of money and I'm not at all sure the training would enable someone to generate sufficient leads.

Even if one were reasonably successful - and that's a big if - judging by the figures on job review sites it would take months to recoup the outlay before making any money.