Starting an online travel agency: what you need to get started

As an independent travel advisor (ZRA), you determine your income and earnings yourself. This depends on various factors, such as the number of hours you work, the number of customers you serve and the margins you make on the trips sold.

As a ZRA, you usually work on a commission basis, which means you get a percentage of the sale price of the trip you sell. The amount of this commission can vary, depending on the agreements you have made with the travel organization you work with.

In addition, as a ZRA you can also use your own rates for your services, for example for advice and booking costs. It is important to clearly communicate these rates to your customers, so that they know what to expect.

It is difficult to give an exact amount what a ZRA earns on average, as it depends on the factors mentioned and also on your experience and knowledge in the travel industry. It is important to invest in your own marketing, network and knowledge to be as successful as possible as ZRA.

A travel specialist is a person who specializes in organizing and selling trips to a specific destination, activity or target group. For example, this could be a travel specialist in adventure travel, a specialist in travel to a specific destination such as Japan or a specialist in travel for people with a particular interest, such as photography or culinary travel.

A travel specialist often has a great deal of knowledge about the destination(s) or the type of travel in which he or she specializes. This allows him or her to provide the customer with detailed information and tips on the best travel period, accommodations, activities and sights. The travel specialist can also advise on the necessary travel documents, vaccinations and insurance.

Travel organizations and travel agencies often use the expertise of travel specialists when compiling their travel offer and advising customers. A travel specialist can also work as an independent entrepreneur and build up his or her own clientele by profiling himself as an expert in a certain type of trip or destination.

A ZRA is an abbreviation for Independent Travel Advisor. This is a person who works as a self-employed person and sells travel from home or their own office. The term ZRA is mainly used in the Netherlands.

A ZRA usually works for a franchise formula or is affiliated with a travel agency chain. The ZRA uses the purchasing power and support of the franchisor or travel agency chain, but has the freedom to determine how he or she sells the trips. This can be done, for example, through personal contact with customers, over the telephone, via e-mail or via social media.

A ZRA must take care of its own customer base and build a good reputation. It can help to have a specialism, for example traveling to a certain country or type of trip.

As a ZRA you are responsible for your own administration, marketing and customer service. You have the freedom to set your own working hours and rates and you can work from home or your own office, offering flexibility and cost savings.

An independent travel consultant is a person who works as a self-employed person and sells travel from home or their own office. So it is actually a kind of freelance travel consultant.

An independent travel advisor usually works for a franchise formula or affiliated with a travel agency chain. The travel advisor uses the purchasing power and support of the franchisor, but has the freedom to determine how he or she sells the trips. This can be done, for example, through personal contact with customers, over the telephone, via e-mail or via social media.

An independent travel consultant must take care of his or her own customer base and build a good reputation. It can help to have a specialism, for example traveling to a certain country or type of trip.

An advantage of working as an independent travel advisor is that you have the freedom to determine your own working hours and rates. In addition, you can work from home or your own office, which offers flexibility and cost savings. However, as an independent entrepreneur you also bear the responsibility for your own administration, marketing and customer service.

There are several ways to become a travel consultant. Below are some examples:

1. Education or course: There are various education and courses that you can follow to gain knowledge about the travel industry and the various products and services that are offered. For example, an MBO course in Travel or a Basic Knowledge of the Travel Industry course. During these educations and courses you will learn about organizing trips, selling travel products and advising customers.

2. Work experience: By working for a travel agency or tour operator you can gain experience in the travel industry and further develop your knowledge and skills. This can be done, for example, as an intern, employee at a travel agency or as an employee at a tour operator.

31. Training on the job: Often travel agencies and tour operators also offer internal training to further develop and train their employees. As a travel advisor, you can also grow in your position and expand your knowledge and skills.

4. Tutorial: There are also several books, websites and online courses available where you can gain your own knowledge about the travel industry and advising clients.

It is important that a travel consultant is well informed about the destinations and products that he or she sells. In addition, it is important that a travel advisor can listen carefully to the wishes of the customer and can respond to this by providing appropriate travel advice. A travel advisor must also be customer-oriented and be able to communicate well.

A travel agency and a travel organization are both active in the travel industry, but they do have different functions and duties.

A travel agency is an intermediary between the customer and the various providers of travel products and services, such as airlines, hotels, tour operators and car rental companies. The travel agency advises and sells trips and holidays to customers, taking into account the wishes and budget of the customer. The travel agency arranges the bookings and ensures that everything is arranged for the customer.

A travel organization is a company that puts together and organizes trips itself. This could, for example, be a package tour in which transport, accommodation and activities are combined in one package. A travel organization can also organize group travel, individual travel or tailor-made travel. The travel organization is responsible for compiling the trip, arranging the bookings and carrying out the trip.

The main difference between a travel agency and a travel organization is therefore that a travel agency acts as an intermediary between customer and provider, while a travel organization compiles and organizes trips itself. A travel agency sells trips from different providers, while a travel organization sells its own products.

There are no specific training requirements for starting your own travel agency. In principle, anyone can start a travel agency, but having knowledge and experience in the travel industry can help to be successful.

There are various educations and courses that you can follow to gain knowledge about the travel industry and the various products and services that are offered. Below are some examples:

MBO Travel Training: This is a 3-year MBO course that trains you to become an employee in the travel industry. During the course you will learn about organizing trips, selling travel products and advising customers.

HBO Tourism Education: This is a 4-year HBO education that trains you to become a professional in the tourism sector. During the course you will learn about the different aspects of tourism, including organizing trips, developing tourism products and managing tourism companies.

Basic knowledge of the travel industry course: This is a short course where you gain knowledge about the basic principles of the travel industry. During the course you will learn about the different types of travel products, the role of tour operators and travel agencies, and how to advise customers.

Training and workshops: There are various training and workshops available that are specifically aimed at starting and running a travel agency. During these training courses and workshops you will learn, for example, about marketing and promotion, negotiating with suppliers and managing your company.

In addition to the aforementioned training and courses, it is also important to gain experience in the travel industry. For example, by doing an internship at a travel agency or tour operator, or by working in another related field. This way you can gain knowledge about the practice and build your network in the industry.

As a travel consultant, there are several tasks you need to perform to help your clients plan their trips. Here are some important tasks:

1. Advising customers: As a travel consultant, it is important to advise customers on destinations, accommodations, flights and other aspects of travel. You should ask about their travel preferences and budget to help them make the best choices.

2. Create travel plans: After discussing customers’ travel preferences, you need to create travel plans that meet their needs. This may include booking flights, accommodations, onsite transportation and activities.

3. Manage bookings: You need to manage customer bookings so that they arrive at the right place on the right date and time. This may mean making changes to bookings as plans change.

4. Handling Complaints: Sometimes customers may experience problems during their journey. As a travel consultant, you must take complaints seriously and try to resolve them so that customers remain satisfied.

5. Stay informed: As a travel consultant, you need to stay up to date with the latest developments in the travel industry, such as new destinations, travel restrictions and safety measures.

In short, as a travel consultant you must be customer focused, have good communication skills, be organizational and have a passion for travel.

There are no set training or certification requirements to become a tour operator, but it is important to gain experience in the travel industry and have a thorough knowledge of the destinations you are interested in. Below are some steps you can take to become a tour operator:

Get a relevant education: Getting a degree in tourism, hospitality or marketing can be useful if you want to work as a tour operator. Some schools offer specific programs aimed at training tour operators.

Work in the travel industry: Work experience in the travel industry can help you gain the knowledge and skills needed to work as a tour operator. Work experience can vary from work in the hospitality industry, at airlines, at travel agencies to work as a travel guide.

Build knowledge about destinations: To be successful as a tour operator, it is important to have a solid knowledge of the destinations you want to organize trips to. This requires researching and building relationships with local suppliers, accommodations and activities.

Develop a business plan: Developing a business plan is crucial to setting up and running your tour operator business. The plan should include your goals, target audience, marketing strategies, and financial projections.

Arrange permits and insurance: As a tour operator you must comply with legal requirements and apply for permits from the government. It is also important to purchase business insurance to protect you against unforeseen events.

Build relationships with suppliers: Tour operators need to build relationships with suppliers of various services, such as hotels, airlines, transport companies, tour guides and activity providers.

Sell your product: As a tour operator, you need to sell your products and services to customers. Developing a strong brand, setting up effective marketing campaigns and offering attractive prices can help you attract customers.

Setting up a tour operator business requires a lot of hard work and dedication. It is important to remember that success does not come by itself, but you need to have perseverance, dedication and perseverance to achieve your goals.

The costs for an ANVR membership depend on the type of company you have and the number of employees you employ. Below you will find an indication of the annual costs:

Travel agency: The annual contribution for a travel agency depends on the number of employees employed. For an agency with 1 to 3 employees, the contribution is €495 per year. The costs are higher for agencies with more employees.

Tour operator: The annual contribution for a tour operator also depends on the number of employees employed. For a tour operator with 1 to 3 employees, the contribution is €1,535 per year. For tour operators with more employees, the costs are higher.

Business travel agency: The annual contribution for a business travel agency is €715 per year.

In addition to the annual contribution, additional costs may also be charged, such as costs for certification, audits and mandatory participation in the Calamity Fund. It is therefore advisable to inquire in advance with the ANVR about the exact costs associated with membership.

The income you can generate as a travel agency owner can vary widely and depends on several factors such as the size of the business, location, market and services offered.

As a start-up travel agency, revenue will be lower in the early stages, but it can grow over time as your customer base grows. If you target a niche market, such as luxury travel, you can charge higher rates and generate more profit.

In general, a travel agency’s revenue comes primarily from commissions and margins on travel, tour operators, cruises and other services that the agency sells. The commissions and margins may differ and depend on the negotiated contracts and agreements with suppliers.

As a travel agency owner, you also need to consider the costs associated with running a business, such as venue rental, employee salaries, marketing and promotional costs, insurance, licensing, and other overheads.

In short, it is difficult to name a specific salary for travel agency owners as it is highly dependent on several factors and can vary. It is advisable to make a good business plan in advance and to make a realistic estimate of the income and expenditure in this to get an idea of the possible revenue model.

To start a travel agency, there are several steps to take and things to arrange. Below are some important aspects:

Knowledge and experience: It is important to have a good knowledge of the travel industry and the various products and services that are offered. It is advisable to follow relevant training and courses and to gain experience in the industry by, for example, doing an internship at a travel agency or tour operator.

Business plan: Create a detailed business plan outlining goals, strategies, market analysis, and financial projections.

Chamber of Commerce registration: Register with the Chamber of Commerce (KvK) and register your company name.

Permits and insurance: Make sure you have arranged the necessary permits and insurance. For example, a license from the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) if you want to operate as a tour operator, and insurance such as liability insurance and a travel agency guarantee fund.

Location and furnishing: Choose a suitable location for your travel agency and furnish it with the necessary equipment, such as computers, printers, telephone and furniture.

Supplier relationships: Connect with tour operators, airlines, hotels and other suppliers of travel products and services so you can offer their offerings to your customers.

Marketing and promotion: Develop a marketing and promotion strategy to promote your travel agency to potential customers through advertisements, flyers and social media.

Personnel: Decide whether you want to hire personnel and ensure a good selection and training of your employees.

These are some important aspects to consider if you want to start a travel agency. It is advisable to be well informed and advised by industry organizations and experts in the travel industry.

Support is included until the end of the current calendar year. If the website is delivered in December, the maintenance will run until the end of the following calendar year. After that, the costs for support & maintenance are € 19.95 per month (billed annually). Need more than an hour? Then consult. That has just never happened. Maintenance includes updating WordPress, plugins and theme. In addition, we make daily (database) and weekly (file) backups and one hour of recovery per month if things do not work properly after the update.

This very much depends on the number of different pages on the website and the functionalities in the website. We can help you with a really good website from € 2.465 ex VAT. All our rates are all-in fixed fee project prices, with no unexpected costs during or after the project. You can find more about our rates on the rates page.

A bit longer answer, because we want to give a really good answer :-)

We realize that there are always situations conceivable in which a website of more than € 3,800 does not fit into your budget. Maybe you’re just starting your travel organization, you’re thinking about building your own, or you have “someone in the family” who says they can build websites too.

To be very honest: if you really only have a few hundred euros of budget available, then we are not the best solution for you, because for that price you can only have a very basic website built based on a standard theme. In practice, we have often seen in recent years that websites are built that are ultimately constantly broken, that even yield fewer bookings than the old website, that cannot be found at all in Google or whose builder is unreachable after delivery, etc. ..

A better question than “do I have a budget for this” is actually “what will it cost me if I have a bad website built (again)” or turn the question around from “can I afford this investment” to “how long do I need to recoup this investment”?

Because let’s be honest: to earn back € 2.465 (assuming a 10% profit margin per sold trip and an average price of € 1,600 per trip), you have to sell a trip to 20 extra people. In general, you write off a website in 5 years, which means that you have to sell a trip to 4 extra people every year (or 1 or 2 companies) to earn back your website.

If you can’t afford that for the all-important channel where your bookings in the modern travel industry must come from, then you already know enough… then it’s RIGHT time to invest in a website that does work. Otherwise, there is a good chance that your business will become more of a hobby than it will actually bring you an income.

Do you REALLY REALLY not have the budget even then? That’s really no shame: in recent years Wendy has even developed an online course especially for small-scale travel organizations that teaches you all the ins and outs you need to pay attention to when developing a really good travel agency website. So IF you really only have a limited budget, then we recommend that you take the course “A Website That Gets Bookings” and use that course to create such a clear instruction and checklist for your website builder that you sure that you will not be faced with any surprises.

You then know exactly what “works” in the travel industry in terms of technology, SEO, web design, conversion technology, marketing tools and writing convincing web texts.

And do you come to the conclusion halfway through that course that you would rather have a Booking Magnet website built? Then we deduct the full course price from your website built with us. (you won’t be the first to whom this happens ;-)).

We can often start the process within two weeks of the introduction. Always within 4 weeks.

On average, a website process takes 3-4 months. Sometimes this is 2 months, sometimes it is 6 months. Depending on the complexity of the website, the response speed of both you and us and any unforeseen issues.

We do work with existing themes and also make a truly unique design for your new website. In that case, we have real creative freedom to design the website that you want and that will really work for you.

Your website is built in the WordPress CMS system. We do work with a standard theme (Avada). Every travel organization is different and must also have its own striking appearance to distinguish itself from the (many) competitors. We therefore also work with a tailor-made website in WordPress, where we develop various content blocks, with which you can build the pages very flexibly. Decide for yourself which blocks are shown and in which order these blocks are placed.

Yes, we use a handy ‘drag & drop’ system that allows you to easily copy pages in their entirety (for example if you want to add new voyages), but we also store all blocks or parts of your pages in a library as ‘page- element’, so if you want to create a completely new page yourself, you can use these blocks to design that page yourself, knowing that it will still look sleek on mobile and in terms of alignment.

So you never have to type complicated codes, but you can still easily add or remove pages and page elements / adjust texts and images, etc.

Good question! Many entrepreneurs (and website builders!) are not aware that in order to maintain your Google position, a number of actions and checks must be carried out before you put your new website live.

However, we use an extensive checklist before we put your new website online and help you to ensure that you do not see any unnecessary fluctuations in Google.

If new pages have been added to your new website/pages have been removed or the name/URL has changed, we will, for example, ensure that your old website pages are correctly redirected to new URLs (301 redirects) when going live, so that you will not see any unnecessary changes in your Google position.

In general, you will always see a small dip in your Google results in the first few weeks after your new site goes online (because Google needs some time to analyze any changes and to include traffic figures for your new site in their algorithm calculations ), but eventually this will recover (and if you have made improvements to your website, such as making your texts SEO-friendly, optimizing your images, adding new SEO pages, etc.) you can even make your website rise enormously in Google.

Wendy is an experienced SEO specialist and has also been providing SEO entrepreneurial courses for travel entrepreneurs for years, so she will also point out actions you can take yourself during the onboarding calls to make your new website easier to find in the search engines.

Certainly, after delivery we ensure that both WordPress and the plugins used remain up to date. This way you can be sure that your website remains stable, fast and secure.

Your new website will be built on our server and only when this new website goes live will it be placed on your current domain name/website address. Your current website will therefore remain online and indexed by Google until we replace it with your new website. If new pages have been added/pages have been removed or the name/URL has changed in your new website, we will also ensure that your old website pages are correctly redirected to any new URLs, so that you do not make any unnecessary changes to your Google position will show.

We are here to help you and remain involved during the launch and after delivery. After going live, different levels of support are possible (depending on your wishes). Michel takes care of the technical updates and maintenance, or extra ‘trouble shooting’ and support for adjustments if you wish.

But of course you especially want your website to be that super effective marketing tool that generates more bookings on autopilot! And let that be Wendy’s mission and specialty: with the practical training courses of Build Your Travel Bizz, she helps you step by step to make optimal use of all the marketing opportunities that your Booking Magnet website offers.

Whether you offer sailing trips, yoga retreats, Buddhist walking tours, tailor-made tours or group tours with a fixed date, are a theme specialist or excursion provider, have 1 or 28 destinations, whether or not you have a booking system, reservation calendar, special travel request form or other ‘deviating’ requirements have, we’ve seen it all!

We have often even built comparable websites or seen certain solutions in practice in the past 15 years as a website builder and tourism marketing specialist. So whatever you have in mind, feel free to schedule a free consultation with us, we are happy to think along with you and it almost never happens that we really cannot come up with a solution.

Yes, we only need your account details. We will help you during the process with what information we need and where you can find it, so that you can provide us with the correct information. With her background as a marketing specialist in onboarding calls, Wendy can also advise you if you need help choosing a system, or if you want to know how to get started with automatic E-mail marketing in a not too labour-intensive way. book and sales funnels.

Yes, in principle all systems can be linked. We then need the correct account details and API link code. We will help you during the process with what information we need and where you can find it, so that you can provide us with the correct information. With her background as a marketing specialist in onboarding calls, Wendy can also advise you if you need help choosing a system.

In short, these are the steps we go through during each project:
1. Strategy session
2. Website session
3. Wireframes
4. Visual design
5. Development
6. Placing content (by the client).
7. Go live
8. Measure and Improve

We do not provide hosting ourselves, but we do have a reliable hosting party that we can recommend, who we know have fast and secure servers. Of course we will help you with the entire process of moving your website (and possibly email). Might feel exciting, often isn’t it really :-)

That depends on what the problem is with your current website. Do you receive too few bookings, does your website have technical problems, or are you not happy with your website builder, for example? Feel free to schedule a free consultation with us, then we will see what the problem is and whether you really need a new website or website builder to get more bookings. Sometimes there are small technical issues that can be easily solved or only minor adjustments are needed in your design/texts or marketing approach and you don’t need a new website at all. We will always be honest about this and through the website and marketing training of www.buildyourtravelbizz.com we can always help you to tackle issues yourself if a new website is not the best solution for you at the moment.