Travel Councillor's

[Floofydawg]

Has anyone started up as an independent travel agent with no experience other than booking their own holidays? I don't know if it's a completely mad idea but I feel like it could be a bit of a pin money earner in early retirement. I've organised our and friends group holidays all my life but that's where my experience ends, however I think it's something I'd enjoy.

Interested to hear from anyone who has done this and how it went.

travel councillor?

It's very easy to book holidays online - what would you offer that is different and how much would you charge?
I would be interested in bespoke tours of countries like Vietnam, with all the travel and visas and vaccinations sorted out for me.

I know someone making good money from it (she annoys the fuck out of her friends on social media while doing it though).

There are a lot of scams out there though and most people don't make money.

Sorry, spelt it wrong.

people.travelcounsellors.com/gb/start-your-own-travel-business/

You need to know how to book things that people can't just google as you can't compete on price. I've done a bit of independent work and it was fun but so often you put in hours and they changed their minds

A colleague was considering this. I travel a lot so she could have done well out of me but having witnessed her booking her own holiday, I'd rather do it myself.

I think a lot of these things are MLM scams.

I've recently used one of these companies for work purposes and would avoid like the plague in the aftermath. It may have been the individual concerned but it was a dreadful experience from start to finish.

Interesting, yeah I had thought of that aspect re doing the research and then them not booking. I've used one myself as they got me a better rate than I could have otherwise got for an Ikos hotel.

I know someone who does it… if you’re not savvy at researching flights/hotels/transfers online then it might be helpful, but that isn’t much of a customer base these days.

I was able to beat her quote by searching myself. It’s a side-job for extra pennies, it’s not an actual income.

We used to use a travel counsellors agent for our company bookings and I think he would mainly work with companies.
It was great from that respect as we could just fire off a quick email of what we wanted, he would find the best options and the charge was a relatively small admin fee, fine as a company and great for delays or cancellations as I could WhatsApp him and he’d fix it.
However he was on call pretty much 24/7 if something went wrong so not quite an easy retirement job.
He was great but I never used him for personal travel as I could get it cheaper without the admin fee and I’m quite tech savvy to sort things myself.