Host Agency 101: Travel Agent Bootcamp

Can you become a Travel Agent with no experience? Yes, absolutely you can. As you learned in my introduction, I’m a prime example of someone who became an at-home Travel Agent with no direct experience as a Travel Agent. In fact, many new Travel Agents have little industry experience.

When it comes to becoming a Travel Planner all you need are these two skills:

1. Travel Expertise

2. Drive

With those two skills, you can absolutely plan theme park vacations for a living. Now, convincing prospective employers is a little more difficult. A lot of Host Agencies get many inquiries a day. In this unit, I want to show you how to highlight these skills and stand out amongst the sea of applicants.

I’ll give you examples of industries and skills that you can emphasize in your resume, introduction email, interview, or cover letter.

Then I’ll give you an example of a resume that has little Travel Industry experience but highlights the skills needed for the profession. Most of the job descriptions listed come directly from my own resume!

Examples of Industries and Skills to Highlight on a Resume

Planning Itineraries:

This part shouldn’t showcase how much you love planning your own vacations. It should be about how you plan these vacations. It’s even better if you have experience planning other people’s vacations, even as a hobby.

You might use an example of how you build your vacations to optimize your time while vacationing. You can talk about how you know the details of hotels and transportation. This might highlight your knowledge of which hotels are best for your client.

Conveying this knowledge is a great way to brag about how good at this job you would be.

Sales Experience

If you have sales experience, your life is about to get a lot easier. Not only will it be easier to find a job, but to find prospective clients as well. You don’t even need sales experience as a Travel Agent. Any sales experience is useful. As a Travel Agent, it’s important to showcase the vacation packages that are right for your client.

There’s a fine line between a slimy Car Salesman and a helpful Travel Planner.

Sales experience doesn’t necessarily mean direct sales either. Working in retail is a great example of this. Retail workers have to help customers make buying decisions and be able to explain the products the store is selling.

Customer Service

The biggest misconception about being a Travel Agent is that you’ll spend most of your time building itineraries for clients. The reality is that you’ll spend most of your time managing your client’s expectations.

They might want the lowest price for the highest quality hotel. They might want an itinerary that hits every attraction in Disney World's Magic Kingdom in one day. The key is knowing how to let them down easily.

With customer service experience, you have the skills to manage their expectations without making them upset. They might still get upset, but you might be able to ease the pain a bit before they take it out on you.

Managing expectations and keeping your clients happy is an extremely valuable skill to have. Going above and beyond for the people you work with is what makes them use your services time and again. I would even venture to say customer service is more important than sales and marketing skills.

Former Travel Industry Workers

A lot of former hospitality workers become Travel Agents. If you happen to be one of them, then it’s a great way to display your passion for theme parks and your expertise. This is a great thing to advertise to clients as well. Who doesn’t trust someone who worked for the mouse to plan their vacation?

That said, you don’t have to work for a travel company to be an expert. You can highlight how many vacations you’ve taken in the past few years or the number of vacations you’ve planned for clients.

Wrap-Up

These are only a few examples of professions you can note in your application. You can use any job experience, volunteer position, or school activities to portray that you have a good work ethic and formidable skills. The important thing is to project confidence that you can do this job. You have the knowledge that is needed to be successful so let it be known!

The next important step is showing how you might find and keep clients. When I started applying to Host Agencies I spoke with a woman who runs the training program at The Travel Institute. I wanted to know the best way to get into this business with no experience as a Travel Agent.