5/11/2010 1:56 AM

So you want to sell travel!

So You Want to Sell Travel?

You have a successful business, a strong client base, and would like to add travel to your offering directly to your customers, not just internal employees. If your business is in no way related to the industry what do you do?

Here are the major topics to start with.

Travel Agency - To Be or Not To Be, To Pretend To Be, or To Be More. You might not think you need to become an full-fledged agency to sell travel however it is much more difficult than you might think especially when it comes to selling air travel. Here are some important questions to ask yourself that help determine if you should:

• Become a Tradiditional Agency
• Use a Host Agency
• Align with a Consortia
• Fake It - Join an OTA

1. Are you capable of obtaining (effort and capital) the credentials needed to become a true travel agency capable of selling all product types? To sell flights to travelers, the up-front cost to get started will be in excess of $25,000, including an ARC number and IATAN membership. You will need a physical location to store items in a locked room / safe such as ticket printers and airline nameplates.There are many more requirements you must adhere to for air. Travel agencies are expected to have an IATA number.

2. Systems - who to choose, what travel products to purchase? A GDS (global distribution system) connection will ask for tens of thousands of dollars to get started and may charge in excess of a thousand dollars in monthly access fees.Non-GDS Systems typically are good for a single segment type (hotel, car, vacation, etc), and there is NO good non-GDS channel for the major airlines to attempt to avoid ARC registration requirements. There are low-cost airfare carriers out there to connect to, but this will not bring significant volume to your site alone. Airline-direct booking channels currently aren't flexible enough to allow you to sell directly through their channel without ARC, IATA credentials.

3. Content - Will you sell travel online on a consumer-facing website? GDS systems have notoriously bad hotel, cruise, and other product content that you don't want your customers to see. GDSs don't distribute images/video/etc. Non-GDS systems provide everything you need to sell content, but only for the travel products they support.

4. Are you interested in negotiating rates with travel product suppliers directly? If no, a host agency may be a good idea. Host agencies do the negotiating and distribute software to enable your business. If yes, you need to be a true agency for you to gain any industry clout.

5. Would you rather use someone else's negotiated rates? Use a host agency if you're not planning to become an airline-ticketing agency. If ARC and IATA-accredited, look into joining one of the large consortium (Virtuoso, Uniglobe, others).

6. Do you just want to sell travel through a website and worry about nothing but small commissions and no up-front costs? Joining an OTA such as Expedia or Travelocity.com as an agent could be a fit, but I have never reccommended this to anyone. I've never understood the point. Travel Agents You'll need real, experienced agents running day-to-day travel operations at a capacity that matches business needs. This is required for ARC or IATA accreditation whether home-based or not. Host Agency Do you have a plan to allow agents to "sign up" to be a travel agent? You are then creating a host agency model where agents and other agencies are signing up to use your credentials. You will be directly responsible for managing those agents that sign up.