Start a Travel Agency in 8 Easy Steps

Do you love to travel? Are you obsessed with planning everything around travel? And love helping others to have a great travel experience even when you are out on a simple trip like travel to a picnic spot? Then you should definitely look at ideas on how to start a travel agency and consider becoming one.

Compared to a lot of other business ideas, if you think of how to start a travel agency, it is relatively cheaper as other business ventures go, and you can often start with limited staff and minimal set-up costs. There are a lot of factors to consider when you want to start a new business like a travel agency, like how to acquire adequate travel industry knowledge, how to incorporate best practices for travel services, knowing all rules and regulations one needs to comply with as a travel agency and much more. But the most important

There are a lot of How to articles available on the subject of starting a travel agency and here is a collection of points for that we have curated for you to help give a boost to start your dream travel agency.

1. Find Your Niche in the travel industry

A niche market is the one that very few have explored thus far. There is always a good potential for growth in it. The same follows for a travel agency. A niche is your friend. It will help you establish your travel agency brand, create your travel agency name and help you get recognized. What this also means is defining your target audience.

So, if you want to be successful, you’ll want to focus a lot of your effort into your market research, branding, and marketing. You’ll need to know who needs your services—your target market—and what they’ll be willing to pay.

2. What kind of travel agent are you interested in becoming?

Do you love snow, or cultural immersive experiences, beaches, hill stations. Whatever you chose to sell, you need to know it inside out. You need to be a source fo knowledge in that particular field you choose. Being passionate and having enough knowledge are the building blocks to starting a sucessful travel agency.

3. Create or curate Products

Once you have found your niche, the kind of customers you are looking for and are clear in your head as to what kind of travel agency you will be, the next logical thing to do is to create products you will sell. You may wonder what a product is for a travel agency. Well, it can be a travel itinerary which lists the sightseeing and activities that a traveler will undertake and may or may not include ground transportation, air-tickets and accommodation. Each package that you thus outline becomes a product for you. Now, you may want to operate in a place where there are not too many products that do not already exist. In which case, you can always curate packages from others or put a personal spin on it and make it your own.

4. Find out what is in demand

Depending on the place that you are going to start your travel agency in, find out what kind of packages sell. Check in your local community. Maybe there’s an opening in the travel market to provide destination adventure honeymoons for young couples who would rather go backpacking than relax on the beach and you are the one to do it.

5. Legal Aspects need to be addressed

When you want to start a travel agency, you should furst read up on the legal requirement. Travel Agency License will vary by state and country. Choose your business structure and get your GST registration done.Name your business and get your GSTIN number

6. Consider the Financials.

There are no huge investments entailed when setting up your travel agency. However, you must take into consideration funds that you will need to rent out an office space (location is very important), do some branding and promotion, hire a few executives, set up your office and maybe even buy a few cars that can ply for you when extending services to tourists.

If you’re planning to be a home-based travel agent, you’ll want to look into finding a host travel agency where you’ll essentially be an independent contractor. Cost of setting up are far lesser in this case, but it also means that you have little or no control over your travel agency and will only earn through commissions.

7. Promote your travel business online too

We are in the age where most travel-related bookings are made online. So even if you are looking to start a travel agency physically, marketing it online will only add to your business. But doing it all by yourself can be tiring as it is a continuous and exhaustive process.

8. Find great partners

One of the best things to do is to find a travel entity who will not only help you grow your own agency but will also help promote you and help you get more exposure online and otherwise. There are many companies that promise you a lot but do not deliver as they end up creating pricing wars among travel agencies competing for the same set of travellers.

The best investment you can make is find a travel company that has good online presence and good credibility in the market. Once you have the initial set-up of your travel agency, tie-up with such companies to provide you some business and also help showcase your products to the world. This should be done parallel to your own efforts.

Here is wishing you the best in fulfilling your dream of setting up your own travel agency. This is not an exhaustive list but one that can help you to have a beginners understanding of what it entails.