Can You Make Good Money as a Travel Agent?

Are you interested in joining the travel industry and want to know the benefits that come with it? Working as a travel agent can be a great way to make money and explore the world. The most important way a travel agent earns money is to receive a commission for trips sold. This may include a commission for booking flights, accommodation, tours, car rentals, entertainment tickets, insurance, and more. An agent will always earn a commission for the sale of trips, but the fees may vary depending on the provider they buy from and if they are affiliated with a consortium or host agency, who will also keep a percentage of the commission. As a travel agent, you usually make money with commissions and fees.

While finding those commissions is important, it's just as important to attract customers and meet their needs in the best possible way. Without customers, there's no way to earn commissions, so networking and sales should be one of the main objectives of your work. Nowadays, travelers want to explore new and unique places, so you can choose to specialize in a specific area. No one can have encyclopedic knowledge of the entire world, so the most successful travel agents choose a specialty. That, combined with the fact that you can work in the travel industry and from wherever you want, can be worth it.

For example, you can choose between cruises, honeymoon destinations, African safaris or Caribbean vacation destinations. If your goal is to achieve a secondary source of income, then a travel agent profession may be right for you. When you work as an in-house agent in a travel agency (staffing positions in agencies are increasingly rare, by the way, but are still in demand), you usually have a base salary and a division of commissions. We'll explore all the pros and cons of being a travel agent to help you make a fact-based decision about your next move. Many travel companies pay more for premium accommodation because, according to statistics, it can increase your exposure by up to 50% and will also generate an additional source of income. Travel agents, unlike many other careers, don't require expensive, specialized training.

It's mostly about a passion for the travel industry, as well as a simple accreditation that you can get online for free. Since your main job is to sell travel products (tickets and tourist packages), you are concerned about how and where you perform the tasks. There are many agents who only travel in groups, since the value of earning a large income is very high. Better yet, if you decide to make the travel agent job your main job, it will allow you to have another additional job with ease. Travel agents can charge a fixed “planning fee” and then deliver travel plans to the customer once they're finished, and that's all they'll do.

Planning group trips as a travel agent can be a popular way to earn money due to the large number of travelers at the same time.

Sebastián Vanbebber
Sebastián Vanbebber

Hardcore coffee enthusiast. General internet maven. Extreme travel evangelist. Avid twitter expert. Subtly charming beer advocate. Extreme food fan.