Ah the travel industry, what a glorious occupation it must be. Always knowing the best top secret destinations, making peoples’ dream holidays become a reality and really knowing your stuff when it comes to places to visit. Seems like a dream vocation.
We wanted to know what it’s like running your very own travel company. So we’ve asked Ian and Angie, travel consultants from Kent, about a day in the life of working in the travel industry.
1. What would you say the top perks of working in the travel industry would be?
Top perks would definitely be the chances of travel. We also have the opportunity to do the job from anywhere in the world – as long as we have access to a laptop and phone we can book holidays and be accessible to clients wherever we are.
2. Do you find that you travel more since running your own travel business?
Definitely. The more we find out about different destinations, the more we want to go there ourselves. With the research we do for our clients, we’re able to find out about places that we may not have considered before so our bucket list ends up growing with our wealth of knowledge.
3. Name your top 3 destinations that you are yet to visit.
Ian’s Choices: Cambodia, Vietnam and New Zealand (touring in a campervan).
Angie’s Choices: Cuba (particularly Havana), South Africa (especially for the Garden Route, to experience a safari and to Penguin Bay for its nature and winery) and Tuscany (Central at first and then in the rural areas which are a foodies’ heaven! I’d love to do a cooking course there).
4. What made you decide to work in the travel industry?
It was mainly the result of our love of travel. Purely and simply, we enjoy experiencing new cultures and destinations. We came to a point where we were thinking ‘what can we do together with passion’ and it was travel. We were actually sitting in a hotel in Marrakech, at which point we were racking our brains as to how to reinvent ourselves, and once it was on the table we started to think about it on a more serious level and now here we are!
5. What is the strangest travel request you’ve ever had from a client?
We don’t think it’s necessarily been the ‘strangest’, it’s more a case of a client asking to go to a destination you’ve never heard of before. That’s quite strange. For example, we had a client who wanted to visit Tallinn, which we were totally unfamiliar with but, at this face to face meeting, we were sitting there agreeing to it all. Then you find things out once you’re researching the trip for them, only to discover it’s in Estonia!
Other people have come up with the likes of Aruba – where the hell is Aruba?! Turns out it’s a little island off the coast of Venezuela, and actually is home to one of the world’s best voted beaches. Another strange request was rather specific – a mother wanted to take her daughter on a particular toboggan ride down a mountain in Switzerland for her 21st birthday. That was it! Pretty unusual but each to their own and it’s great that we get to find out about these places too, that we would have never normally looked into.
6. What were the biggest challenges you faced in setting up your own business?
Probably Facebook and getting to grips with social media. The learning curve on the tech side was definitely a big one for us.
7. What were the biggest challenges becoming a new travel consultancy?
Getting across the fact that you’re a travel agent now when you weren’t last week. It’s also tricky getting your name out there and cementing the belief that others can trust you to book their holidays. We just focused on being passionate and genuine about what we were doing. There was also a lot to learn about the rules and regulations around travel and bookings. Even though we’re a franchise, and it’s all worked out for you, we were headless chickens for months after training. There were so many protocols, especially on the legal side – more than you’d think! But we found it interesting being on the other side of the system, from being a traveller to the person booking someone’s travels.
8. What advice would you give to someone looking into becoming part of the travel industry?
Try the lottery first! Our advice would be to prepare yourself for the business to take time to build – because you’re building people’s trust. Be passionate, you absolutely have to be, there’s no two ways about it. You also need to have a certain amount of travel experience, and you need to be prepared to learn and to work hard.
9. Where will you visit next?
Vietnam. It’s a country that, after having done several bookings for, and becoming totally intrigued by the research; we just have to get to before everyone else has been! The more we read about it, the more it appeals to us – with its history and culture especially.
10. What destination has been your favourite so far?
Kenya. The safari was just mind blowing, to see all the magnificent animals in their natural habitat. The whole experience of being on a safari was absolutely amazing. And with that, we also got the other side of the story, which was seeing just such adverse poverty in Mombasa – it was a complete contrast and quite humbling. We found the Kenyan people to be so friendly and engaging, we loved learning how some of these people live.