The National Travel Agent Survey conducted in January 2019 suggests agents who have a deep and diverse knowledge in key segments are more likely to be successful.

 

Diverisification is Key

Key segments meaning sun and beach destinations. Travel agents who diversify into cruise, river cruise, luxury, coach tours, etc. have a much higher likelihood to be successful in a home-based environment.

In fact, they can earn 50% more than their call centre or storefront agency counterparts. The findings suggest that if you’re an office, call centre or storefront agent with great product and destination expertise who is considering becoming home-based … you would be nuts not to!

By analyzing product and destination expertise across all four groups of agents, including full-time, home-based, the data suggests that home-based agents indexed higher on a more diverse product mix - as well as on higher margin product sales.

 

Key Findings

Full-time home-based agents percentage of sales of non-mainstream product types:

• Groups - 7%
• Ocean Cruise - 8.9%
• Coach Tours - 5.4%
• Weddings - 3.4%
• River Cruise - 4.8%
• Europe Package / Tour - 6.6%
• Sun & Beach - 14.5%

Some of the data suggests that some home-based agents are in an older age bracket and have more years of experience than the non-home based agents.

This may explain that they have a broader product expertise in more diverse products beyond such mainstream products as sun, beach, air only and car rental.

 

Home-based agents reported having healthy sales to less traditional destinations such as:

• Australia & New Zealand - 4%
• South America - 4%
• Asia - 3.4%

 

Home-based agents also scored themselves high in their confidence and expertise in selling higher margin destinations:

• Luxury - 28.6% said they either ‘Rocked’ or were ‘An All Star’
• River Cruise - 39.7% said they either ‘Rocked’ or were ‘An All Star’
• Europe - 37.4 % said they either ‘Rocked’ or were ‘An All Star’

 

For more information on The Travel Agent Next Door visit thetravelagentnextdoor.com or call 416-367-8263