PathSource - TRAVEL AGENT: Working in Travel

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TRAVEL AGENT: Working in Travel

About this video

Tula works for Going Places Travel in Berkeley. She helps people travel all over the world.

Job Title: Travel Agent

Job Summary: Travel Agents

Job Description

Travel agents sell transportation, lodging, and admission to entertainment activities to individuals and groups who are planning trips. They offer advice on destinations, plan trip itineraries, and make travel arrangements for clients.

Travel agents help travelers by sorting through vast amounts of information to find the best possible travel arrangements. In addition, resorts and specialty travel groups use travel agents to promote travel packages to their clients.

Travel agents may also visit destinations to get first-hand experience so they can make recommendations to clients or colleagues. They may visit hotels, resorts, and restaurants to evaluate the comfort, cleanliness, and quality of the establishment. However, most of their time is spent talking with clients, promoting tours, and contacting airlines and hotels to make travel arrangements.

A growing number of travel agents focus on a specific type of travel, such as adventure tours. Some may cater to a specific group of people, such as senior citizens or single people. Other travel agents primarily make corporate travel arrangements for employee business travel. Some work for tour operators and are responsible for selling the company’s tours and services.

On-the-Job Training

Some on the job training can be expected for new employees.

Certification Requirement

It's voluntary to get certified but can add credibility and help you find a job or customers.

Quick Facts

Average salary

National Statistic Change Location

Confirm

$20,000 - $50,000

Projected Job Growth

5 to 15 percent

Typical schedule

Full-time, Flexible

Typical workplace

Indoor, Travel, Office

Personal Qualities

Verbal communication skills, Detail oriented, Networking, People skills, Problem solving skills

Educational Path

Education Requirement

High school degree

Recommended Education Degree

High school degree
Trade/vocational School
Associate degree

Recommended Majors

Hospitality

Related Careers

Information Clerks
Meeting
Convention
and Event Planners
Secretaries and Administrative Assistants

View Detailed Career Data

PathSource provides free English transcriptions for each of our informational interviews on video which will appear here after you have signed in. Our advanced transcriptions are highly interactive. They scroll down automatically as the video plays and users can jump to a specific part of the video by clicking on any word in the transcript.

For a small fee, we offer transcriptions in different languages, making PathSource a great tool for English Language Learners. This feature is currently available for customers in the education field only.

Please contact us at support@pathsoruce.com if you have any questions or would like to get a price quote for advanced transcripts offered in a second language.

P3.instances[0].transcript.parse_transcript_data({"transcript":"My name is Tula. And I work for Going Places Travel in Berkeley. And we've been here for 30-plus years. And helping people travel all over the world. We do safaris. We do personal travel, business travel, whatever people like we put together. And yeah, basically that's what we do. My typical day is arrive in here, we work on computer. Saber is the computer system we use. And the first thing I do is to check my emails. And there will be emails from clients, new, old, references from other people, and so on and so forth. So we try to help them. And a day can be stressful because there are lots of ups and downs and flights canceled and this and that. But they also can be great when people want to take nice trip, vacation to a beach resort and that kind of thing to do. Yeah. So we work, call. Make a lot of calls, take a lot of calls. And of course on the computer all the time, basically. And it's fun. It's fun. And then we get people coming in the office. And we always like that because it's nice to meet face to face with some of our clients. I started many, many years ago. I actually went to a local college. I was living in Chicago at the time. So I took classes there. Most of the clients here-- I mean the agents here have been to travel school, like the local college, where you learn the basics. And of course, when I went, they were just starting with computers. And when I first started going places, we didn't have computers. And we had to write everything down, call the airline. And it took a lot longer time than it does today. My reason for picking this field is I love to travel, and I also have traveled a lot around the world. So it's kind of fun to be able to tell people that I've been there, and you can do this and that. So that helps a lot. And it used to be that we had some good opportunities to travel, but-- we still do. Yeah. So that's one of the reasons I went into this. My advice is. If you are really interested in this field, if you can find a college that has a travel class that they offer-- I don't know if there are many around. But also maybe try to get an intern in a travel agency. We have had young people being here. And sometimes it's hard because we're all working and busy. So it's hard to sort of teach. But you can. You can certainly learn. As far as pay, it's not the greatest pay that you will get. But if you really like the area of travel, then I think this is a great opportunity. Yeah. So good luck. ","file":{"id":423461,"video_id":"3620466716001","name":"2660-Tula-TravelAgent","duration":196859,"thumbnail_url":null}});