Travel Agency Management
Managers of successful agencies must carefully watch all areas of the company’s operations to generate a profit.
This requires keeping overhead costs to a minimum, maintaining high productivity per employee, producing high-volume bookings, and maintaining higher average profit margins on the bookings.
Liabilities of Travel Agency
In general, a travel agency can avoid liability problems by performing precisely the servh the client.
It is important for them to review carefully all of the advertising and promotional materials they give to clients to make certain the wording in such material does not negate their disclaimers.
Four areas of special significance to travel agencies in terms of maximizing profits:
1)Making Effective Use of Assistance by Suppliers .
2) Selling Other Travel Services . 3) Managing the Compensation Mix . 4) Automation .
travel agents and suppliers in order to avoid the danger of being sued by a client for problems created by an intermediary through insurance and use of disclaimers.
A travel agency, for example, may receive a higher percentage commission from a cruise line than from a domestic airline.
Retail travel agents may also obtain override commissions from wholesalers and other suppliers such as airlines and hotels.
Travel Agency and Suppliers
Travel agent is one of the most important members of the travel industry.
It is the person who brings together the suppliers of travel services with the buyers and offers them something.
Suppliers also offer other forms of incentives to travel agents to entice them to sell their services.
Travel agencies are not high-profit businesses. Many small agencies, where the owner and the operator are the same person, may operate on only a slight profit or none at all.
Travel agent usually does not own the services he or she sells to travelers. The agent is paid a commission by suppliers for sales of airline tickets, hotel rooms, and so on.
commission vt. To place an order for.
A retail travel agent is a commissioned intermediary who serves as a sales outlet for : carriers, hotels and resorts, entertainment centers, car rental companies, other suppliers, including wholesalers.
Lesson Ten Travel Agency Management
Travel Agency and Suppliers Liabilities of Travel Agency Conferences and Associations Commissions and Overrides Travel Agency Management Future Trends
Future Trends
In summary, the travel agency business, which was once thought of as being a relatively simple one to enter, is becoming increasingly complicated .
One possible sales mix looks like this:
The American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA),
The Association of Retail Travel Agents (ARTA).
Commissions and Overrides
Travel agents receive commissions from suppliers and wholesalers.
The independent travel agency with no affiliation is fading away, replaced by megaagencies and franchise agreements.It can survive by joining a cooperative marketing service or a consortium of agencies that is necessary to negotiate the override enjoyed by the franchised and mega-agency.
Wholesalers commonly offer a graduated rate schedule for overrides. This means that the percentage override offered to a travel agent increases as the number of bookings produced by the agent increases.
It can be held responsible for and cannot be held responsible for a client .
Though an agent cannot be responsible for social conditions crime or riots, for instance the agent does have a responsibility to inform the client about known adverse factors of the destinations .
Conferences and Associations
three major conferences: The Airline Reporting Corporation (ARC),
which replaced The Air Traffic Conference (ATC) due to deregulation; The International Airline Travel Agency Network (IATAN), composed of U.S. and foreign airlines with international routes; and The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), composed of major cruise lines operating throughout the world.
The two most influential conferences regarding the manner in which a travel agency does business are ARC and IATAN .
Competition in the travel agency business thus is very intense and may be expected to increase in the future. Although more agencies exist today, the number of bankruptcies has also reached record highs in recent years.