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    Five Steps to Your Own Internet Travel Agency
    Five Steps to Your Own Internet Travel Agency
    Five Steps to Your Own Internet Travel Agency
    Ebook67 pages1 hour

    Five Steps to Your Own Internet Travel Agency

    By Barb Nefer

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    About this ebook

    Are you looking for a home-based business with flexible hours and low start-up costs and expenses? Are you a stay-at-home mom who needs some extra income? Do you need more money to supplement your paycheck from your regular job? Are you unemployed and looking for some income to tide you over? Do you have a passion for travel? Starting your own online travel agency might just be the right move for you.

    This 16,000 word book isn't about multilevel marketing programs or worthless cookie-cutter travel sites. It gives you five solid steps to starting your own online travel agency. If you implement these steps, you'll have your very own travel business. It also discusses the realities of the business, without false get-rich-quick promises.

    Topics in this comprehensive guide to starting your own home-based business include:

    -Is an Internet travel agency right for you?
    -How to calculate your earning potential
    -Making a business plan
    -Making a marketing plan
    -Choosing a specialty and differentiating yourself
    -Start-up costs and expenses
    -Finding a legitimate host agency (and avoiding scams)
    -How to handle failure

    This career guide contains exercises to help you see you're cut out to be online travel agent and to help you set up your business. It's also loaded with helpful links to free and cheap resources and vital information. It's written by Barb Nefer, a successful online travel agent since 2004 who books Disney Cruise Line and Walt Disney World trips. She's also author of another career guide, "So You Want to be a Counselor." Barb brings her experience to this book and offers her advice throughout, based on her own extensive experience as a home-based travel agent.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarb Nefer
    Release dateApr 11, 2013
    ISBN9781301411290
    Five Steps to Your Own Internet Travel Agency
    Author

    Barb Nefer

    Barb Nefer is a long-time writer, starting with newspapers and magazines in the 1980s and expanding her horizons to the online world in recent times. She's the About.com Guide to Pet Supplies and Product Reviews and the Orlando Theme Parks Examiner for Examiner.com, where she also writes about Disney Cruise Line, relationships, and personal finance. Barb lives in the Orlando area and has annual passes to all the major Central Florida theme parks, including the four Walt Disney World parks, Universal Studios Florida, Islands of Adventure, SeaWorld Orlando, and Busch Gardens Tampa. Her frequent visits to the parks give her a rich expertise that she shares with her readers in her online articles and ebooks. She also has a small menagerie consisting of cats, guinea pigs, a Quaker parrot, and a horse that she tends to when she isn't busy playing at the theme parks or writing. Barb also has a doctorate in psychology and is the author of the print book, "So You Want to be a Counselor." She's a regular contributor to "Animal Wellness" and has written for such magazines as "Bird Talk," "Horse Illustrated," "Grit," "The Writer," "Twins," and "Going Bonkers."

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      Book preview

      Five Steps to Your Own Internet Travel Agency - Barb Nefer

      Five Steps to Your Own Internet Travel Agency

      Everything you need to start your own home-based travel business right now, with low start-up costs and flexible hours

      by Barbara Nefer

      Smashwords Edition

      Lifeskills Press Logo

      Copyright 2013 by LifeSkills Press

      All Rights Reserved

      Please submit corrections, additions or comments to lifeskills@gmail.com

      Disclaimer: This book is for informational purposes only. The author is not a lawyer or accountant, so nothing in this book should be taken as legal or financial advice. It represents the author's personal experience as an online travel agent. The author assumes no liability for any consequences resulting from the use of this information.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Step One: Reality Check

      Step Two: Your Business Plan

      Step Three: Your Marketing Plan

      Step Four: Finding a Host Agency

      Step Five: Have Patience

      Appendix One: Online Resources

      Appendix Two:

      Introduction

      How to Use This Book

      Can you really start your own internet-based travel agency in only five steps? Is booking travel from home really a viable business? Can it provide you with at least supplemental income?

      I speak from personal experience when I say yes, yes and yes!

      Once upon a time, in the dark days before the Internet, you visited the local travel agency when you wanted to book a vacation. Their office was usually located in a strip mall or shopping center, and it offered limited business hours.

      You'd be handed a flurry of brochures to research your trip. If you were lucky, your agent might have some expertise in the destinations that caught your interest. If not, you were pretty much on your own. You had to decide from the printed materials whether a particular place would be the best vacation spot for you.

      There wasn't much opportunity for comparison shopping once you settled on your trip. You were quoted a price, and you could take it or leave it. Usually it was better to take it, since you'd waste more time and gas visiting other agents who would probably give you an identical quote. You'd hand over your down payment and make your reservation on the spot. Your agent would usually be available for questions during the agency's business hours, but you'd have to wait for most answers because they required research.

      Now, many people simply shop at their keyboard, researching destinations online and finding the best deals. They visit potential destinations from their homes or offices at any hour of the day or night. They don't have to rely on guesswork to select the best places. Websites like tripadvisor.com give them instant access to reviews from dozens of other travelers. Websites like cruisecritic.com and Ranchweb.com have information on specific vacation types, and sites like Allears.net (which covers Walt Disney World) cover specific destinations in depth. Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, Hotwire, and Priceline make getting competing quotes as simple as a few clicks or taps. Once a person finds the best price, she books it online immediately.

      With this shift in consumer behavior and the wealth of information available on online, it might seem that running a travel agency isn't a viable business. With all the competition from the dominant websites, travel agents may seem poised to go the way of CDs, landlines, and video cassettes.

      In reality, travel agents are far from extinct, although the business has changed. The Internet has actually opened new opportunities for travel professionals. Some people like to do their own research and make their own bookings, while others prefer to work with an expert. This is especially true when they discover that it doesn't cost any additional money (the travel agent's commission is paid by the hotel, resort, cruise line or other vacation company).

      As an online travel agent, you offer your clients two distinct advantages:

      1) Personalized service. Expedia, Travelocity and the like may have a high volume of business, but that often comes with lowered customer service levels. Many consumers get frustrated with interminable hold times, followed by contact with an impersonal and uniformed agent who spews scripted answers. Sometimes they get connected to a phone agent outside the United States who doesn't even understand the problem. Many of the travel giants are recognizing this and trying to put an emphasis on service, but their sheer size and volume of bookings makes this nearly impossible to do consistently.

      An individual travel agent who offers prompt personal contact, and even some coddling and hand-holding when needed, has a huge advantage in the online marketplace. Often such agents can match the prices of the major players or come close enough to woo clients who will pay a bit more for a high level of service.

      If you're willing to make yourself available for more than just standard business hours, you can parlay that into successful competition with the big boys.

      2) Well-defined niche markets.

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