How To Become A Travel Agent

As a travel consultant, you will help people plan vacations, trips and tours to locations across the country or around the world. You’ll help clients determine the types of trips that are suitable for them, and then arrange to sell them travel products that best meet their needs. Travel products you will sell to your clients include airline tickets, hotels, rental cars, travel tours or packages, cruises, rail passes, and more.

In most cases you are not the direct supplier of these products, but a "middleman" who arranges the sale between a supplier and your client. In exchange for arranging this deal, you are paid a service fee or commission by the supplier and/or the client.

A day in the life of a travel consultant might include:

§  Speaking with clients about their travel needs.

§  Researching destinations, accommodations and fares.

§  Getting clients’ approval to purchase travel products.

§  Booking travel products by computer, fax, or phone.

§  Developing itineraries (travel schedules) for individuals and groups.

§  Sending confirmation to clients with travel details.

§  Traveling to new places to learn about their amenities and attractions.

Travel consultants may work as independent contractors, or as employees of travel agencies. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3 of 5 travel consultants work for an agency, and about 13% are self-employed.

While many travel consultants work in an office at an agency, technology has now made it possible for the travel consultant to work out of his or her home.

What Do You Need to Become a Travel Agent?

Working as a professional travel agent is a rewarding career for many people. Travel is a billion-dollar industry that offers many opportunities for those interested in tourism. As a travel agent, you make travel arrangements for the corporate businessperson, individuals, families or groups. Being a travel agent allows you to learn about exotic locations and different cultures while helping people plan their trips. You also get to travel yourself in many cases, often for free. But there are certain skills and training you need to become a professional travel agent.

Travel and Tourism Training

Many community colleges, universities and online schools offer programs that train you to become a travel agent. The American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) is a trade association that has member travel schools in 14 states including New York, California, Maine, Ohio and North Carolina. Depending on the school, you can train via correspondence study, on-campus classes and/or online. Curriculum varies with each school but usually includes courses on computerized reservations systems, world geography, marketing, sales, group tourism, cruises and customer service.

While going to travel agency school is not a requirement to become a travel agent, completing such a program and getting a certificate or diploma can greatly improve your chances of getting a good job in the travel industry. The minimum requirement for becoming a travel agent is a high school diploma or GED.

Computer Skills

Because most of the allied industries of air travel, hotels and car rentals use computerized systems, it is imperative that anyone who wants to be a travel agent become proficient in using a computer. Taking classes in word processing, spread sheets and databases is very useful. There are inexpensive online courses and books that teach these skills. Many public libraries offer free computer classes to patrons.

Travel Experience

It is a good idea to have some travel experience when seeking work as a travel agent. While this is not a mandatory requirement, it helps if you can put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Once you have traveled, you have a better understand ding of the pleasures and problems of planning and going on a trip. This is invaluable experience for a travel agent.

Other Useful Skills

Being a people person definitely helps when interacting with people of all nationalities. Respect for other cultures is also necessary. Being a good listener and being detail-orientated are also important skills to have. A tiny mistake on a reservation could cause a disastrous trip. Interest in learning about other countries and being willing to do research to find the best deals for your customers will result in repeat business.

If You want to more information visit our site:- www.multilinkworld.com you can also email multilinkworldflight@gmail.com multilinkworldflight@gmail.com

How b2b travel portals benefit travel businesses?

                                  

Today Travel Businesses and Agencies are using B2B Travel Portals as it benefits them to serve their customers at ease. Travel Portal helps companies to engage in forming new business relationships and build web based  business solutions with mobile applications  for tasks that  help in forming new relationships.

Multilink offers travel portal services at a cutting edge for the benefit of  travel businessesto enhance their business on a large level. It creates a bridge for the travel agents to connect directly with the airlines at ease. It acts as a middlemen for small business owners so that they can benefit from its service creating goodwill and advantage for the customers as well as the agents. Multilink operates as a pool of opportunities to fulfill the needs of B2B and B2C customers .Multilink operates as a franchiser for big corporate firms to enhance their  B2B and B2C business.

Over the years, with integration taking a major step in the forward direction, peregrinate portals have evolved from just displaying information to more tactile form of utilization involving booking, scheduling, and a facileness of avail hub with online payments and remote notifications. All of this has led to an environment where it has become imperative for any tourism player to take his business to the next step through this channel.

Benefits of using Travel Portal

Reduced maintenance cost:

From ambulating to a peregrinate office and waiting for a peregrinate agent to explicate the entire holiday package seems akin to a hassle to every customer. With the Era of Smartphone users, this task has been reduced from hours to just a few clicks away.

Authentic-time access:

 A customer can facilely get authentic-time access to prices of hotels, flights, rental accommodations and even the entire holiday package. Similarly, a peregrinate business can get authentic-time access to the volume of users who are booking during peak and non-peak season which avails in providing better business analysis

Customer care support:

 A peregrinate portal can offer customers a chat option where he/she indite down any query regarding the peregrinate. Peregrinate portal avails in providing an instant solution to any peregrinate issues. Customers can additionally ask for more information on a particular peregrinate and so on.

Mazuma-efficient:

 Peregrinate agency portal avails in preserving the time and cost for business by reducing manpower and physical setups and bringing more of an entire business on a user’s phone. Since the time peregrinate portal has come into subsistence it has availed in bringing cost-efficacious solutions to business and further.

Visit us-www.multilinkworld.com

Email Id- multilinkworldflight@gmail.com

Contact- 9082947471

What are XML/ API in Travel Portals?

Travel industry is the fastest growing industry these days because traveling is an essential part of globalization. To make one globalized people travel from one place to the other. Also travel industry is the one which has provided backbone to the IT industry by introducing the concept of E-commerce where sellers and buyers are well connected online for selling and purchasing the products. In this XML plays an important role many business owners who are running E-Commerce portals may hesitate to make you understand what exactly it is. Multilink has answer for this and will make you understand in a simple way.

Well XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. It is a markup language which defines a set of rules for encoding document in a format which is both human and machine readable. It is defined by the W3C’s XML 1.0 specifications and by several other related specifications, all of which are free open standards.

Let us make it simpler to understand:

XML is a way of writing messages and sending data to remote computers and can talk to each other. It’s far simpler than it sound. Your website will talk via XML’s messages to talk to your supplier’s computer and get result to perform an action , the process will be like this:-

• User make Search on your website e.g., LHR to JFK (London, united kingdom to New York, USA)
• Your website creates an XML message that it sends to your suppliers, requesting search results relevant to the users search.
• The supplier uses an XML response to send you back their results, which usually include all details especially, price.
• The user selects one of these results to book and the website sends another XML message to the supplier with the customer details and the flight id, this is then booked by the supplier, who replies with a booking reference.

Importance
 XML in your website jumps up the price of your site and somehow makes it a best bookable website. Using XML technology, you can create a flexible, modern travel site with your own look and feel without having to invest in costly and complicated design plans. Multilink provides you such solutions.

What Is XML integration?

An XML integration is basically a connector, that acts as a "translator" between customers and suppliers allowing different formats or programming languages (usually XML) to be compatible. This way the information can appear from a flight ticket provider in the website of an online travel agency, even if they have the databases information differently structured.

XML INTEGRATIONS ALLOWS:

• Centralize inventory management
• Increase distribution channels
• Personal savings

What is API? (Application Program Interface)

API stands for application programming interface, commonly known as web services which are accessed via hypertext transfer protocol and execute a remote system hosting the requested services.
Application Programming Interface, and in simple terms is a way for one company to legitimately access the products of another. At MULTILINK, when we provide you with access to our flight API, and once it is integrated into your website, it will allow your customers and your business access to a great variety of services.

MULTINK, a leading B2B portal company, experts in implementing third party API XML integration and XML integration for global travel companies , in travel trade we provide end to end API integration solution and build travel booking system through the XML connectivity of many flight ticket booking provider company.

Benefits of XML / API integration

· API integration helps in quick development and easy maintenance of the projects as end data (inventory / information) is managed at the end of API owner’s end.

· APIs Integration benefits the branding & marketing related initiatives as it hides the information about the actual provider, whose system is accessed to fetch the data.

· Multiple APIs can be integrated into a single web based system to bring the better inventory for the end users.