How to Become a Travel Agent (You Don’t Have to Go to Travel School)

How to become a travel agent starts with deciding why it is you want to be a travel agent. If you want to be an agent to make commissions on selling travel, to help people book travel and to travel cheaply at travel agent rates – then becoming an agent is extremely simple. However, if you’re looking to become a licensed agent, with a Main Street address, and brochures in your lobby. . .wait – that’s easy too.

There are several companies that enable interested parties to become agents for them for a small fee. In exchange they provide an internet site branded with your ‘travel agency’ name, they provide the booking engine to help you book travel and give you access to travel agent sites that provide travel agent rates. This is the path I have chosen, and would recommend to others.

The disadvantage to becoming an agent this way is the lack of SABRE computer system training or use. Also, you don’t automatically become a cruise expert or a vacation expert. By joining your local travel agency, you would get these things automatically as part of the new team.

However, on the flip side of that coin, by going the route I have chosen, you can get any credentials or level of expertise you want with the training they do provide, access to independent training and even virtual training done through the company’s website. Why would you want to be a cruise expert anyway, if you haven’t taken the classes to learn the trade.

The SABRE computer system is pretty outdated as well, the software the new breed of agencies provides gives you all the access to the help and research that you need to be great in the travel industry.