Self-employed travel consultant

[newmumlovescakr]

Keep seeing these adverts pop up on my social media to become a travel consultant. Can’t work out if it’s all a glorified pyramid marketing scheme, or if people actually make money from it? Have a lot of international travel coming up that I need to book and wondering if I could save/make myself money. Anyone have any experience?

Its an MLM but people do make money at the top. You need a massive friend circle/follower count and have to relentlessly badger people from what I've heard.

It’s an MLM. You will lose more money than you make.

I have a friend does this and doesn’t use it as an MLM - but does have a big circle of friends and family and does it for this. I’m very anti MLMs and am on the mumsnet board for that and whilst I appreciate it’s an MLM ‘model’ if you want to use it for income, I have to say she’s made it work for her big circle and got some great deals - depends how you intend to use it I guess

I have a friend does this and doesn’t use it as an MLM - but does have a big circle of friends and family and does it for this. I’m very anti MLMs and am on the mumsnet board for that and whilst I appreciate it’s an MLM ‘model’ if you want to use it for income, I have to say she’s made it work for her big circle and got some great deals - depends how you intend to use it I guess

It's an MLM. Unless you have a very large circle of connections who spend a lot on holidays and would be happy to pay you a commission to book things for them (or actually, even if you do), run away very fast.
The whole MLM model relies on 'fake it til you make it' - all those people saying they're making money aren't, they're just pretending to reel in more people so they can get a share of their 'profits'. Everyone who looks like they're doing OK in an MLM either has another full-time income, or got in the very beginning, (ie years and years ago) and is now sitting right at the top of the pyramid.

Totally agree unless like my friend you do actually have that large circle already happy to use her services and large family

Yeah I looked into it, you do get quite substantial commissions from bookings BUT there's monthly fees and costs for training and so on etc etc so unless you're going on holiday every single month I don't see a way to come out on top.

The massive elephant in the room, regardless of how big your circle, is that you don't get paid until the client has taken the holiday.
This means that you do a shedload of work planning and booking the holiday, but you might not get paid for another year, and in the meantime you're paying your monthly membership fee, your website fee and so forth. There is also a real danger that you do weeks worth of work for a client who then cancels the holiday 6 months later, leaving you with nothing.

The reason that high street agents have largely disappeared is that there simply isn't the demand anymore, and most people can get a decent enough discount shopping around. It's a big loss-maker.

I have a friend who does it and is constantly posting about it and trying to recruit people. She does travel a lot so uses it for her own bookings and gets the commission back.

She has been on a few trips and posted about upgrades they got etc. And she has been to Orlando for a big conference. I assume she has to cover her own costs for that.

Thanks everyone! Don’t have a huge circle of family and friends; nor do I like the idea of constantly advertising so maybe this isn’t for me. Just out of interest though, does anyone know roughly what the fee- commission split might be?

A colleague does it. Her instagram is full of posts about helping people ditch their 9-5, while she’s still working a 9-5. That’s enough to put me off.

Usually you get between 10-15 percent of the booking cost but you then get 70 percent of that minus a 3 pound admin fee.

So if someone books a 3k cruise. You get 70 percent of 300 quid. It rises to 80/20 split after you've booked a certain amount of travel.

Its useful if you travel a lot yourself and get the commission on things you would have booked anyway as it were. I cant see how it could be worth it as a full time job unless you love the social media recruitment side of things.