How To Become An Travel Agent From Home
The home-based travel agent industry is on the rise. If you have a passion for travel, you can make a good living by helping others plan their getaways. Here are some steps to follow in order to become a successful agent:
Step 1: Set up your office space
You’ll need a quiet place where you can sit and focus on your clients. Make sure it’s well lit and comfortable. You should also have access to a computer, printer, telephone and fax machine. In addition, you will probably want to invest in some extra storage space for brochures and other promotional materials.
Step 2: Register with a travel agency
It’s important that you register with an established agency before you start selling tickets or making reservations on behalf of clients. You’ll want to be sure that your clients know they’re dealing with an experienced professional who can deliver quality service at all times.
Step 3: Research destinations
Once you’ve registered with an established agency and set up your office space, it’s time to start researching possible destinations for your clients’ trips. Look for places that offer good value for money so that your clients will get more bang for their buck! You may also want to consider offering incentives.
How To Become An Travel Agent From Home
If you’re thinking of starting a travel agency from home, you’re in luck. The start-up costs are relatively low and there are plenty of opportunities for someone with the passion to sell travel. We’ll walk you through the steps you need to take to start a travel agency from home. Starting any business is no walk in a park, but it certainly helps if you have someone to advise you and lay out a path. And that’s what we’re here for! We’re here to help support you and answer your questions as you start out on your new entrepreneurial journey!
One quick note: If you use a host agency, it will make the process of starting a travel agency waaaaay easier (especially if you’re a total newbie!). We recommend it to probably 90% of our readers. When working with a host agency, there’s very little risk, and the up-front costs are relatively low! For those new to the industry, we’re a huge fan of the host agency route. 😊
10 Steps to Starting Your Travel Agency From Home
Here’s a summary of the steps to start your travel agency from home. If you’ve already completed some of the steps, you can click on the link to shortcut which step is best for you!
- Find your travel agency niche: Finding a travel agency niche is a great way to hone in on what about travel you’re most passionate about. If you develop a niche, you’ll be building your travel agency business on a strong foundation of your strengths, interests, and personal networks. Not only that, it will help you give direction as you start (and grow) your agency!
- Choose your travel agency name: This is often a step advisors struggle with, but don’t skip it! Travel vendors need a travel agency name for their records. Make sure you have one ready so you can start selling travel.
- Choose a Travel Agency Business Structure: Most new-to-industry advisors will be choosing between a sole proprietorship or a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC). It’s a matter of balancing host requirements (if you go with one), business protections, your agency model, and your budget. We’ll walk you through it!
- Create a Travel Agency Business Plan: A travel agency business plan is a document that will help you cat herd all your amazing ideas for your business. It helps you define your mission and goals, helping you think through the process on how to get there. Best yet? We have a free 15-page travel agency business plan template you can use! Read more here on creating your business plan.
- Register Your Travel Agency with the State: This is a critical step so to legitimize your travel agency. You can register your LLC through the Small Business Administration (SBA) resource to find the steps to get registered with your specific state. This will enable you to do other fun steps like starting a business bank account.
- Get an FEIN: This is optional but recommended, here’s why: It’s free to get an FEIN, takes just a few minutes and if you move to a business structure that requires an FEIN in the future it will save you a few steps!
- Set Up Your Travel Agency Financials: Separating your business bank account from your personal account is required if you set up an LLC. But frankly, we recommend setting up business financials regardless of your agency model. Read why here.
- Choose Between a Host Agency, Travel Franchise, or Your Own Accreditation: There are a lot of choices in which direction to go with your travel agency. Do you have your own vendor relationships and want to get your own travel accreditation? Do you want to partner with a host agency under your own brand so you take advantage of their aggregate sales volume? Do you want a turnkey agency option with a franchise? This will help you choose.
- Check Out Host Agency Reviews’ Resources Page: Our resources page gives you tips on how to optimize our site to help start your travel agency from home.
- Sign Up for 7 Day Setup Travel Agency Challenge: Within each of these steps, there are many many many other steps to starting a travel agency from home. (Yes, just like nesting dolls.) This resource will make sure you access our resources in the order you need them. Read more about it.
- Bonus: Read up on what you can expect in terms of income potential as well as time and financial investment.
I know. It can be totally overwhelming. But if you’re starting a travel agency from home, these steps will help prepare you to feel 10,000% (no those extra zeros are NOT typos!) more confident. What are the preliminary steps you need to take when starting a travel agency? Funny you should ask . . .
Here are the steps to take to start your travel agency from home:
1. Find a Travel Agency Niche
A niche is your friend. When you start your home-based travel agency, a niche will help you establish your brand, create your travel agency name, and navigate the world of consortia when you get to that point. Starting a travel agency without a niche is like traveling without a compass (or, let’s be honest, a smartphone). Are you going to be focusing on a destination? Maybe you’ll be like Andres Zuleta, who specializes in Japan tours:
2. Choose Your Travel Agency’s Name
Vendors will need a travel agency name for their records so have one ready before you can start selling travel.
Whether you go with a host agency or choose to go independent, you’re going to need a name for our agency. The vendors (hotels, cruise lines, airlines, etc) will need a travel agency name for their records so have one ready before you can start selling travel. Having a niche already picked out can help you as you decide on your travel agency’s name.
Starting your travel agency (from home or otherwise) is a lot of work. The last thing you want as your travel agency opens its doors is a letter saying you’ve infringed on someone else’s trademark! We help you through the things you need to consider when choosing a name for your agency. Are their any competitor’s with similar names that will make it harder for you to pull up at the top of the search engines? Are the URLs available? Are their any copyrights? We go through this and a whole lot more, so dig in!
Here’s the things to consider when choosing your travel agency’s name!
3. Choose a Travel Agency Business Structure
You can change your business structure as your needs evolve.
A base step in starting your travel agency from home is deciding on a business structure. There’s a lot that goes into what is the best fit for you. Do you have personal assets like a house or car that you want to make sure are protected? How much money do you want to spend?
We help you understand the different business structure options for your new travel agency: Sole proprietor, partnership, LLC, S Corp.
As you’re starting your travel agency, you may feel like the low cost of a sole proprietor makes the most sense for you. It’s important to know that you can change your business structure as your needs evolve.
As your business grows and you’re making more bookings (which exposes you to more liability), you can always move to a structure that gives you more personal liability protection, like the LLC. While it’s more expensive, and may not be feasible for everyone as they’re starting their travel agency, the protection it offers to your personal assets is incredibly important as your business grows.
How do you decide on a business structure? We’ll walk you through it here.
4. Create Your Travel Agency Business Plan
Next step in starting your travel agency? A business plan!
While a travel agency business plan isn’t technically required, it is something I highly recommend. I didn’t write a business plan when I started this site but I also knew online marketing and the travel industry front and back and had the industry connections to make it work. Most people starting a travel agency from home either don’t have experience in starting a company or they don’t have experience in travel. This is where a business plan can help.
What a business plan does for you is it forces you to think through each different area of your business and come up with a plan. Will you stick to that plan 100%? Probably not. But it gives you something to refer back to and helps you organize your thoughts. Plan to take a chunk of time to work on it as it’s not something you want to do willy-nilly.
Not only that, but we made it really easy with our free 15-page travel agency business plan! All you need to do is download our template and adapt it to your agency.
