Longtime lurker; first time poster. Every fall I book a weeklong beach vacation for 6 people: my parents, my husband and myself, and our 2 children (now ages 5 & 3). Each year it gets more and more time consuming for me to find a resort, vet it, figure out their best rates, cross reference with rewards, etc etc . . . y’all know the drill.

I decided to try a travel agent this year and was looking at Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Florida (MHB)— the broadwalk looks incredible and we’ve had a great experience with several Margaritaville resorts over the years). MHB lists a “travel profession” you can connect with and it appears they are a TA with a hospitality group based on their email address. So I reached out by email, told her how I found her contact info, and gave brief details about our trip including dates and our departure airport. Then said I was happy to speak by phone or email, whatever was easiest for her. She responded happy to help and that she was including their reservations team to assist.

Y’ALL. Hand to god she just forwarded my email to the resort general booking email address, who then merely responded with the promos on their website. Then suggested if I wanted to package airfare that I reach out to Jet Blue Vacations, Delta Vacations, etc.

I feel so embarrassed! And slightly misled. And a little put out. Is this how TAs normally operate? I was so hoping that this would maybe be a TA or an agency I could work with each year. My husband and I are also huge sports fans and try to go to a big event each year— this year the Las Vegas Grand Prix. So if the TA experience was great I planned on using them for everything moving forward.

I know this beach trip isn’t a $50,000 booking, but a 2 bedroom suite isn’t exactly inexpensive, either. I’m just confused and feel reeeeeal dumb. Did I go wrong somewhere? TIA!!

Some destinations have hundreds of tours competing for the same travelers. That makes me wonder how to improve tour visibility without paying for advertising.

A small local operator obviously can't compete with the marketing budgets of large tour companies. So what can actually make a difference? Does the title matter? Photos? Reviews? Price? Availability? Or is visibility mostly determined by the platform?

Lookimg to solo travel turkey via tour group.

Any good websites with good tour guides? Is Intrepid travels reliable?

Does anyone have any good or bad experiences with EF Go Ahead tours? We are thinking of taking the Paris, Rome trip with the Athens extention. We've seen mixed reviews of this organization.

OR if anyone has good recommendations for a reputable travel agency that is experienced in European/International travel.

Hi everyone,
I run a boutique travel agency and we are expanding into sports and major entertainment experiences (Champions League, Formula 1, Tennis Grand Slams, UFC, and major festivals/concerts).
I'm looking for reliable, official B2B ticket suppliers, aggregators, or sub-agent platforms (similar to P1 Travel, XS2Event, or Sports Events 365) that offer:
Direct B2B/reseller portal access with NET rates or commissions.
Guaranteed official tickets and VIP/hospitality packages.
Good inventory across European football, F1, and major events.
If you run an agency or operate in this niche, which platforms or primary brokers have given you the best support, rates, and reliability?
Thanks in advance for any leads!

​

I am building a tool that gives a travel website an custom planner on their websites(whatever platform) where users can create their own custom trip based on all of agency's available services such as destination, activities and many more.this would give an estimate to users and itinerary to both with their leads to agency which can contact them.

Will travel agents love that on their website

anyone nagsesell dito ng travel fund sa ceb pacc??? huhuhh need to book kasi

I am planning to have a family trip with my parents (both 60+) and my partner.

I want to visit there maybe next year February.

Considering my parents, DIY is not an option for me so preferrably tour package might be helpful.

Anyone here please recommend a legit and budget-friendly travel & tours agency.

Thank you so much!

Hi all

I am working on a research on travel agents and thier importance in planning a trip , how it’s beneficial , process . I would like to have as many perspectives as possible . It would take about 10-20 mins and has no incentives . Any one willing to help is greatly appreciated .
I am an ex travel agent , helping out a friend who is exploring starting a startup ( hence no incentives ) . The research will be made available online eventually so everyone can benefit .
Please dm or drop a reply , so we can connect and discuss further

I’m working with a Startup and looking for Travel agents and Consultants who can partner with us. We send people who are interested to travel to Thailand or Singapore and you handle the process.

My mom is a travel agent and I spent my summer creating an itinerary software that cuts the time she spends on making itineraries by a considerable amount (from around an hour to 5 minutes). I am trying to gauge interest on it and decide whether or not other travel agents would find it helpful. The app includes the advisors branding, a proposal feature for comparing different itineraries, a document dump where you can put in all documents such as hotel confirmations, train tickets, tour reservations and janky vendor itineraries and it will tie it all together into something ready to send to a client. It does it in the form of a link that you can edit whenever something changes and publish it to the clients live link so you don’t have to send them a brand new itinerary. Could you guys give me some recommendations on what agents need in a website like this and what would make it worth it to you? I’m not trying to promote anything just looking for ideas and feedback!

This season I've been running more tours than ever and my commission tracking has completely gotten out of hand
Every operator I asked seems to do things differently talking on percentages, payment schedules, some based on net, some on gross. Some commissions come quickly, others show up months later.
The frustrating part is I feel like I spend more time figuring out who owes me what than actually focusing on clients. I recently opened an older booking and realized I had never properly tracked the commission, so I had to dig through confirmations and payments to piece everything together.
I’m hesitant to jump into something complicated that still requires a lot of manual work behind the scenes.
For those of you working with multiple tour operators and suppliers, what are you actually using to track commissions?

Please give honest reviews about them, their services, hotel selections, etc. or any other reliable most trustworthy travel agency for umrah from karachi/peshawar to Saudi arabia. I want to take my sisters with me so I am skeptical if everything. Eant a budget friendly but everything covered travel plan from a reliable travel agency. Please help a sister out!

These days I’ve been trying to find the best places to get actual tour and experience bookings without sifting through a bunch of trash.

I’m kinda fed up with what I’ve dealt with lately like getting random inquiries or half finished leads and people asking for prices and then disappearing. I want something that actually brings in travelers who are serious and ready to book. I don’t want to chase after something that does not exist.
I want a platform that agents are quietly making money from and not making their job harder but more flowy.
If you use one that is good good I’d love to know what kind of tours it works best for, and what to expect

my crm is basically a junk drawer right now and i keep forgetting which tours were actually good and which just looked good online. been trying to build a simple list before it gets worse, any tips?

I've been running a small tour business for a while now and one thing I've realized is that reviews seem to drive almost everything.
The weird part is that most of our guests tell us they had an amazing time but only a small percentage actually leave a review afterward. We send a thank you message and sometimes a follow up email but it's still hit or miss.
A friend who runs experiences in another city told me he started using a booking platform that automatically follows up with guests after the tour encourages reviews and makes the whole process easier. He also said it helped him get more visibility because people were finding his tours directly through the platform instead of only through his website.
Now I'm wondering if I've been making things harder on myself by relying mostly on direct bookings idk.

I made the mistake of searching for my own type of tour like I was a tourist and now I understand why getting bookings can be so hard lol.

There are SO many options. Food tours that look almost identical, walking tours covering the same areas, day trips going to the same places... after scrolling for five minutes even I was struggling to remember which was which.

It got me thinking about how to sell local experiences without just becoming the cheapest option on the page. There's always going to be someone willing to charge less, so constantly dropping prices doesn't feel like much of a strategy.

What actually makes people choose you?

I am trying to advertise a tour in tripadvisor.com. Between them and what they “say“ is their partner, viator.com along with some other partners they talk about it has been impossible to get this job done. We are all IT literate. Have experience with this. We put the profile in eight or nine times. It never submits properly. It doesn’t show up at all or pieces of it show up, but not the full submission.

They don’t clarify if anything was wrong with our images, text, contact information, payment methods, etc… We are willing to use their system of payment and give them their cut, which is totally unclear. I did use AI to ask about as it notified me that I should not put any of our own contact information in our profile, although there are places to submit your contact information. There’s nothing that says that you cannot do that.

Can anyone please advise as to the shenanigans that go on with submitting a new profile and a new trip to this organization?

Thanking anyone who helps!

I've been looking at the amount of competition for dolphin tours and boat trips in Florida and it's  wild. Search almost anywhere along the coast and there are dozens of dolphin cruises, sunset trips, snorkeling tours and private charters that all look pretty similar from a traveler's perspective.

It got me wondering how the smaller operators actually get discovered. If you're running something like a dolphin watching tour, are most people finding you through Google direct bookings, hotels or marketplaces like Viator, GetYourGuide and Expedia?

I'm especially curious about the OTA side because maintaining listings across several platforms sounds like a lot if only one or two are actually producing bookings. Viator seems to come up constantly for US tours but I don't know if that's actually true in practice or just because it's the one I hear about most.
Any Florida operators here willing to share where their bookings actually come from? Even rough experiences would be useful. Mainly interested in what works for smaller businesses rather than the huge boat companies with ten departures a day.

These days I’ve been trying to find the best places to get actual tour and experience bookings without sifting through a bunch of trash.

I’m kinda fed up with what I’ve dealt with lately like getting random inquiries or half finished leads and people asking for prices and then disappearing. I want something that actually brings in travelers who are serious and ready to book. I don’t want to chase after something that does not exist.
I want a platform that agents are quietly making money from and not making their job harder but more flowy.
If you use one that is good good I’d love to know what kind of tours it works best for, and what to expect

I'm curious about the experience of small operators using an online marketplace for tours and activities. I run a relatively small local experience and most of my customers currently come through word of mouth. That works but it also means I'm constantly dependent on people discovering me somehow. The appeal of an online marketplace is that travelers are already searching for things to do in a destination.

Is it worth it and does it take a long time before a new listing starts getting noticed?