Become a Home Based Travel Agent

I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Jake Steinman, CEO of TheTourOperator.com and asked him to share some information with us about the company and why they are anxious to work with travel professionals.

Our company, North American Journeys has always been a b2b company that has connected buyers and sellers of travel who don’t know one another since 1992. We began working with international wholesale tour operators who sent visitors to North America and after 9/11, began working with domestic operators as well. We built a website that contained sample itineraries and downloadable coupons wholesalers could give their customers as discount incentives to come to the U.S. That was just the beginning.

So how did you get involved with working with Home Based Travel Professionals?

After surveying our customers and watching the trends we found that wholesalers did not have direct contact with the consumer, however travel agents did. Travel agents began to find our site and started using some of the tools we have there. www.thetouroperator.com now has over 5,000 registered users and one of our biggest user segments is home based travel agents who fins the content of great value to their businesses.

No, the site is FREE for travel agents to use and it contains simple tools and reference information “crated” for travel professionals. Areas of the sight mostly used by travel agents are:

Free sample itineraries search covering over 200 cities, including pre-and post cruise itineraries covering all major ports

FREE VAP “E-Vouchers” that can be customized with an agency name and e-mailed directly to clients prior to departure.

If an agent wants to check this out, what are the next steps they should take?

Registration is simple. It takes less than a minute, and again it is totally FREE. Just go to http://www.thetouroperator.com/register.html and register on the site. Once registered, there is a list of homeport city itineraries they can use.

That is a good question. Destinations and suppliers pay us a fee to host their trade-oriented content on our site. You might liken it to a giant co-op, where we format and collect the content and then promote it to users. Just check it out at www.thetouroperator.com.

Joanie Ogg CTC MCC
Joanie Ogg Marketing Group
Editor

Joanie Ogg is a thirty-five year veteran of the travel industry and has been involved with the independent contractor evolution since 1988. She is the principal of Joanie Ogg Marketing Group, which specializes in consulting and speaking on the topic of Home-Based Travel. She also provides marketing and sales for wide variety of products under the umbrella HomeBasedTravelAgent.com.

A demonstrated industry leader, Joanie most recently served as the President of the National Association of Commissioned Travel Agents (NACTA) and TravelSellers. She and her husband Tom acquired NACTA in 1996 and sold it to The American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) in 2000. Joanie’s tenure in the travel industry includes owning and operating one of the first successful host agency models. She has owned and operated several storefront travel agencies (both commercial and leisure), as well as a Hawaii wholesale tour company.

Her decades of success have garnered her numerous accolades over the years. Her accomplishments have been recognized by receipt of two Lifetime Achievement Awards from major trade groups, being named as one of the “100 Most Powerful Women in Travel” by Travel Agent magazine on several occasions, voted as “Travel Agent of the Year” by the readers of Travel Trade magazine, and has been recognized by many other industry organizations throughout her tenure in the industry. In 2008 Joanie Ogg was inducted into the CLIA Hall of Fame, an honor held by some of the most influential executives in the travel industry.

Joanie is a Master Cruise Counselor (MCC) and a Certified Travel Counselor (CTC). Joanie has co-authored two popular travel industry books for cruise specialists and home-based travel agents and has authored hundreds of travel trade articles. She has inspired tens of thousands of travel agents attending her presentations at trade events, cruise seminars, international trade gatherings and numerous local educational venues throughout the United States. With a time-honored background and forward-looking vision, she is often featured as a speaker at many of the travel industry’s major conferences and events. Joanie’s speaking talents are widely sought as a travel industry emcee by the most recognized travel organizations. She has emceed such events as Cruise-A-Thons, ASTA’s CruiseFest, The Trade Show, The Travel Institute Forum and all of NACTA’s National and International Conferences.


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