Membership wont actually cost you any ...
17 October 2019 Bella Walker
Whilst many people wont bat an eyelid at our very low membership rate of £49 per month to gain access to all the technol...
If you were a travel agent booking your personal travel, you would be able to take that commission as a saving
As a Travel Industry Professional you can get up to 90% discounts on flights, hotels, car hire, cruise and much more
The biggest perk of all is free travel. Service providers and tourist boards want you to know the product so you can sell it better and so they take you on free Familiarisation Trips!
If you sold 3 family holidays a month to friends, relatives or just social media acquaintances, you would make £1,000 – that’s £12,000 a year!!!
We may seem like a homeworking travel agency- but we are actually very different
Home workers promote their travel services to their friends, family and leverage their networks on social media. The profit they make is split between the home worker and the company they work for. Typically, the home worker will keep between 60-70% of the profit they make.
Homeworking based travel companies include:
We provide you with the technology and the wholesale product and cover our costs from the membership fee. You can then either use this platform for just your own bookings, or to make some extra money on the side.
Here we explain some of the terminology, which in turn
explain the basic working principals of the industry
Probably one of the biggest incentives to join is the official recognition of being a travel agent and the perks that brings
The IATA ID CARD opens up staff rates on flights, car hire, activities and tens of thousands of hotels worldwide.
Savings can be as high as 75% off the standard price
Travel agents are able to book a seat on the GDS- a system that is used by all airlines.
As soon as a seat is booked, it is a confirmed booking and the price you get at the time of holding the seat is guaranteed.
You don’t have to pay for the seat until you issue the ticket. This can be anything from 24-72 hours from the time the seat is held to 6 weeks before departure.
So you could hold a seat in January for travel in November and not have to pay for the ticket until October!
Like flights, travel agents can book hotel rooms and not pay for them until 30 days before departure. This is how travel agents can offer holiday bookings with low deposits of £50 per person with the balance payable near departure.
We have over 750,000 hotels on our platform, coming in from bed banks and wholesale inbound operators across the world. We have both room rates and FIT hotel rates that cannot be sold directly to the public without including a flight.
With our system you can also book multiple hotels within the itinerary, add on cruises, excursions & tours.
So if you wanted to book a holiday which included a hotel stay in New York, Los Angeles and Hawaii; a cruise from Hawaii and then a driving tour across California- you can do that on our system. Because of the complexity of this type of an itinerary, online travel companies simply don’t have the technology to intuitively build the itinerary for the customer. If a consumer tried to book individual components themselves, they wouldn’t end up paying a much higher price.
The complexity also means travel agents can mark up the price much higher than with other types of travel because they can get prices significantly lower than the customer. Even with a 35% margin, the agent would be more competitive than individual component prices the customer would have access to.
All online websites that allow you to book a multi leg flight do not offer the cheapest pricing. The reason for this is fare routing combinations. For example, a flight from London to Honolulu in Hawaii allows a routing through New York and Los Angeles. This ticket would cost under £1,000 including the stops in NY and LA. If someone wanted to travel through Washington and Las Vegas, an online website would give then the lowest published fare which indecently is over £3,000.
Using the GDS data (that we provide you access to) and viewing the permitted routing, you would be able to book flights on the permitted routing and then book 2 sector fares between New York and Washington and Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
The IATA Agent ID Card is the most widely recognised validation of a persons status as a
travel agent. It allows airlines, hotels and other industry principals to check the IATA
number to instantly validate an agents status within the IATA portal. The card is also a
requirement at check in by airlines and hotels for those using an industry staff rate. The
IATA agent portal currently has 13,414 offers on airlines, hotels, car rental, tours, transfers,
excursions and ancillaries.
For an up-to-date list of offers, visit:
All travel members of our travel club will be issued with an agent IATA ID card once they have completed 2 bookings within a 2 months period, demonstrating that they are a genuine travel organiser.
Familiarisation trips are run by airlines, hotels, tourist boards and tour operators to showcase the product they are promoting. These trips are FREE. They are designed to give agents an in-depth knowledge of the product or destination so they can sell more effectively.
As a bona fide travel agent, you will have access to hundreds if FAM trips every year. Some fam trip are designed to be small and intimate with group sizes of 4-10 people. Mega Fams can included as many as 50 people on the trip.
During a FAM trip you will be hosted from the time you arrive at the airport in the UK until the time you return. Many FAM trips will include access to the business class lounge even if you are travelling in economy. If there are spare seats available, you will often get upgraded to a premium cabin so that you can experience the product for yourself. During the trip, you will be hosted for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You will get to experience local attractions and go on popular excursions- all without paying a penny.
The downside is that you will have to travel with a random group of strangers. But we guarantee that at the end of the trip, most of you will become friends for life!
One of the great advantages of becoming a travel industry professional is the industry discounts. Airlines offer discounts of between 10% and 90% depending on the type of concession you are using. Many of the larger hotel chains also offer discounts of up to 50% on the standard rates. As a travel professional you can also contact individual hotels and ask for staff discounts and also complimentary room upgrades, executive lounge access or free breakfast. Staff travel rates are available from:
Any travel you book will either be at the net rate which other travel companies mark up or will be a commissionable rate that you earn commission on. The difference between the net price and the gross price the same product is sold to the public can be as high as 25%. In the vast majority of cases however, the differential will be 10%-15%.
What ever travel product you book, you will almost always save a substantial amount of money on the retail prices.
If you spend over £5,000 a year on travel you will earn back between £500 and £750 a year in commission or savings. If this applies to you, then you will more than cover your annual membership fees in savings and commission.
Travel agents are able to book a seat on the GDS- a system that is used by all airlines.
As soon as a seat is booked, it is a confirmed booking and the price you get at the time of holding the seat is guaranteed.
You don’t have to pay for the seat until you issue the ticket. This can be anything from 24-72 hours from the time the seat is held to 6 weeks before departure.
So you could hold a seat in January for travel in November and not have to pay for the ticket until October!
Travel agents are able to book a seat on the GDS- a system that is used by all airlines.
As soon as a seat is booked, it is a confirmed booking and the price you get at the time of holding the seat is guaranteed.
You don’t have to pay for the seat until you issue the ticket. This can be anything from 24-72 hours from the time the seat is held to 6 weeks before departure.
So you could hold a seat in January for travel in November and not have to pay for the ticket until October!
If you are intending on leveraging your personal networks to make an extra income out of travel on the side, we will provide you with a range of marketing materials to support you. Some of the things we include are:
The travel industry loves to put on a good show and most of all party! Many travel brands own football clubs, and with the overwhelming majority of the industry being dominated by women, these brands are always looking to fill spaces in their corporate hospitality boxes.
You can look forward to attending launch parties, product promotion parties and various networking events and seminars throughout the year
We take care of all customer service and aftersales matters. Once you have booked the travel arrangements and collected payment for it, we will look after the passenger from that point. The passenger will contact our office based team for changes, queries, requests and cancelations. We will provide all the support required both prior to, during and after the return from their holiday
Our office based team will provide you with all the help and support you require when making bookings. We can help with questions relating to using the system, product, destinations and anything else that you may need support with. Our office based team are travel industry professionals who have decades of industry experience between them.
We have product from a range of wholesale suppliers to the travel trade within the system. You can book flights from leading UK flight consolidators, hotels from over 20 leading global bed banks as well as all the major international hotel chains. We also feature all the leading cruise lines, car hire companies, excursion providers and travel ancillary products. Featured suppliers include:
Every member will get their own personalised website. We include the cost of your own domain name and logo design within the membership subscription price- you just have to choose the name. We will put up a live booking site on your domain branded with your logo colours. The site will allow your friends and family to book flights, hotels, car hire, cruise, holidays, excursions, tours, attraction tickets and ancillary products such as airport parking, transfers and travel insurance. The site will be fully automated and everything will earn you a minimum commission of 10%- so you could be earning money in your sleep!
The Travel Professionals Club can be a great way of enhancing your personal CV. You will after all be working in the travel industry as a bona fide travel consultant.
If you ever decide to leave the club, we will be happy to provide you with a reference that you could use to progress you career both inside or outside the travel industry.
- 12 month minimum contract
We will provide you with a booking system to manage all the bookings you make for yourself and anyone you sell travel services to. The booking system includes all the functionality to view pricing and availability, make bookings, generate travel documentation, collect payments and save client records.
For members that opt for the annual subscription, we will provide you with your own Galileo or Amadeus GDS terminal. You will be able to use all the functionality of a GDS including checking fares and rules, searching for availability, holding seats, creating PNRs and issuing tickets.
For members that opt for the monthly subscription, you will have access to the GDS emulator which has all the native functionality of the GDS terminal using commands but without some of the UI assistance features that are offered on Galileo Smart Point or Amadeus Web Terminal.
The GDS is the system used by all airlines to store and distribute their fares and availability as well as create live bookings directly into the airline system.
The GDS is especially useful for those that now how airlines manage their yield management. Lower fare booking classes are often released at odd times of the day, but do follow a pattern. Often, this is in the middle of the night. So if you check availability at the right time, you can often save a lot of money on your flight tickets.
Redemption Flights: If you know which class the airline uses for redemption tickets, you can check availability much faster using the GDS
Our platform provides automated ticketing functionality. Provided payment has been made, you will be able to issue tickets immediately. Our ticketing function allows you to issue tickets up to 2 hours before the departure of a flight and you can issue both IT and Net fare tickets using the functionality we provide.
If you are holding IT fares many months in advance of travel, the system will alert you as you come close to the date that tickets must be issued. You can set the system to auto issue the tickets (if you have available funds on your account) or issue the tickets manually.
We provide you with merchant facilities that allow you to take payments by credit card for any bookings you make for friends, family and acquaintances. Once you have made the bookings in the system, you can send the quotation or booking confirmation to your client. They will be able to review the information and then click on a link that takes them to the payment gateway. Once payment is made, the funds will show on the system under the booking record and you will be able to issue hotel or supplier vouchers and flight tickets.
Our payment processing system uses 3D secure to ensure that no fraudulent transactions pass through the system. We have negotiated amazing rates with our merchant gateway provider which is as low as 0.89% on personal Visa cards and Mastercard.
We run regular interactive webinars with airlines, hotels, cruise lines, car hire operators and other product suppliers to help you learn about the unique selling points of different products. These sessions will equip you with answers to the questions that customers are likely to ask about a product as well as give you the skills and techniques to effectively sell these products to customers.
A number of our product partners have also developed e-learning platforms where you can take courses followed by online assessments that provide a product expert qualification at the end.
Before you begin booking travel, we will provide you with comprehensive systems training. We will show you how to use the all the functionality of our booking and management system as well as teach you the dynamics of the GDS and the commands needed to check availability and rules, hold seats, create PNRs and issue tickets.
If you intend on selling travel products, we will provide you will comprehensive sales training. Areas we cover include
We have partnered with tourist boards and CVBs across the world to offer you over 100 destination training programmes. Each programme is run using highly effective e-learning software. You will develop advanced knowledge of each destination that will allow you to both answer questions about the destination but also make recommendations for the most suitable holiday based on your advanced knowledge. The courses will also give you the knowledge you need to effectively sell the destinations.
All of the courses have assessments at the end, and once completed, you will be certified by the tourist board as a destination expert. These qualifications can be used to enlace your CV
If your intention is to make money from travel, out marketing workshops will teach you how valuable your existing network is. We will help you develop your skills to enable you to leverage the power of your network and promote your personal brand. We will also give you the skills to use social media in a way that is guaranteed to bring in sales. Our focus is on helping you engage your network rather than just throw information at them which is the mistake the vast majority of people in the travel industry make.
This will give you an idea of the level of savings you could achieve. We searched our rates and then did the identical search on the leading travel platforms to see how our rates compared
You could have that as a saving on your own holidays!
17 October 2019 Bella Walker
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