Become a Home Based Travel Agent

There has been a lot of conversatation about lead programs in the community (HBTACommunity.com lately, so I was able to obtain an interview with TripAtlas.com's Travis Snelling. Here is the scoop on what appears to be a great opportunity. Also,, note the SPECIAL OFFER being made to HBTA NEWS readers.

Having been online now for nearly three years, TripAtlas.com is the world’s largest online travel resource with over 90 million pages of content viewed by over 500,000 travel consumers every month. Consumers come to research destinations and interact with our network of professional travel consultants - TripAtlas PROs.

TripAtlas PRO is the most comprehensive online platform for travel professionals. TripAtlas PROs have access to qualified leads posted by real travel consumers actively looking for assistance with their vacation planning. They can also publish their own trips for consumers on TripAtlas.com, allowing them to showcase special offers and unique group packages. Among the other features, PROs also receive an enhanced company profile that consolidates all of their contact information, blog posts, published trips, ratings, reviews and specialties into one page for consumers to see.

Lead generation is certainly a buzz-word in today's travel professional vocabulary. Can you explain it here in more detail for our readems?

Consumers looking to find a travel professional to arrange their travel plans go to TripAtlas.com and utilize our exclusive Trip Builder. This information is posted and immediately available to our registered TripAtlas PROs, who decide which consumer travel leads are of interest to them. TripAtlas PROs then respond to these travel inquiries and in many cases develop great relationships with new long-term clients.

Our TripAtlas.com trip request leads range from simple air fares to all inclusive packages, cruises, and even requests for group travel and meetings. We also receive numerous requests for cruises, groups, honeymoons, adventure travel, golf, family outings and many other types of special interest travel. Since TripAtlas.com has such a large, global consumer audience visiting each day, there are always new and interesting leads coming in, 24/7 every day of the year.

PROs can sign in to the site at any time to review all available leads. Powerful search, sort & filter capabilities allow PROs to quickly and easily find the most relevant leads for their business. Leads can be divided into segments such as cruises, luxury, honeymoon, etc.; or divided up by any worldwide destination. We send daily reminder emails to all TripAtlas PROs with the latest and most relevant leads for their business.

Almost all. General requests are available to all TripAtlas PROs but consumers have the option of sending requests to specific PROs which are only available to that PRO. For general leads, we don't limit who can respond to what. Each individual PRO decides which leads are of interest to them and if they want to respond to it. The decision for whom to respond to in order to arrange travel rests exclusively with the TripAtlas PRO. One way of generating exclusive leads that nobody else has access to is using the Trip Publisher. If a consumer likes a trip published by a TripAtlas PRO and requests more information, that lead will only be available to the PRO who published the trip.

The annual membership is $35 per month. Membership includes 30 complimentary leads to get started, plus an additional 10 complimentary leads every month for twelve months. That’s a total of 150 complimentary leads included in an annual membership. Of course, access to leads are just part of the package. Engaging thousands of daily consumers with online marketing and building & maintaining a customer database are also included, among other features.

When signed in to the exclusive, Pros only area on TripAtlas.com. TripAtlas PROs respond to leads simply by clicking on the lead that they are interested in, reviewing its details and typing in their response in the provided message box. The consumer then receives an email notification and visits TripAtlas.com to review the details of the message. The entire process takes only a couple clicks and you can also set up e-mail templates to save even more time.

Each TripAtlas PRO membership includes 150 complimentary credits and each lead costs one credit. Additional credits are available at a cost of just 99 cents -- yes, that's less than a dollar per lead – and can be purchased directly within the TripAtlas PRO platform via our simple, secure online ordering process.

How does an know if a lead is “real”? Travel professionals are understandably concerned about wasting valuable time on a lead that is unlikely to end in a sale?

After requesting a quote, the consumer receives an e-mail from TripAtlas asking them to verify their request and if the consumer verifies their request a gold star is added to the lead. Lead details will also show if a consumer has provided a telephone number or if they'd like to be contacted directly via e-mail instead of via the TripAtlas.com communications platform. This enables a PRO to decide which leads offer the best sales opportunity before committing to a response. Our consumer leads are 100% real – if not they get removed and we will credit each PRO accordingly.

Do TripAtlas PROs still have to pay for a lead if they quote the client and the consumer does not react?

If after requesting a quote, the consumer receives an e-mail from TripAtlas asking them to verify their request and if the consumer verifies their request a gold star added to the lead. Lead details will also show if a consumer has provided a telephone number or if they'd like to be contacted directly via e-mail instead of via the TripAtlas.com communications platform. This enables a PRO to decide which leads offer the best sales opportunity before committing to a response. Our consumer leads are 100% real – if not they get removed and we will credit each PRO accordingly.

Each PRO gets an enhanced online profile that showcases their specialty areas, travel expertise, unique product offerings and even an embedded version of their own web site. Many TripAtlas PROs don't have websites of their own and don't need one because their TripAtlas.com Profile does everything they want and need of a website, plus they can benefit from the thousands of daily visitors on TripAtlas.com instead of trying to build their own website traffic which of course costs considerable time and money.

The Trip Publisher is another great tool that gives PROs the ability to compete with the big online travel agencies. PROs publish specific trips or unique itineraries that are then visible to thousands of daily visitors on TripAtlas.com. If interested, consumers can then send a private request for more information to just that PRO.

What makes it even better for PROs who publish trips is our TripAlert system. We send one trip each day to thousands of our subscribed consumers which often results in multiple private leads for that PRO.

PROs can also post blogs, track consumer travel trends with real-time charts and lists of where consumers are travelling to and from, network with other PROs and also take advantage of an excellent CRM to track and follow-up with new and established clients.

To keep track of all client communication and leads, PROs also receive an informative Dashboard that shows what leads they're currently responding to, the status of those leads (cold, warm, hot, closed, etc.).

Simple: we offer so much more. TripAtlas PRO is really the most comprehensive online platform for travel professionals. We are a complete online marketing solution for travel professionals that not only helps generate leads, but also serves as an all-in-one platform for connecting travel professionals with travel consumers. Whether an individual specializes in groups, cruises, honeymoons, golf, adventure, seniors or any other type of travel, TripAtlas PRO helps travel professionals succeed online.

Yes. Just visit TripAtlas.com/pro and sign up for a free trial. You will receive 5 complimentary credits so you can test the system, plus you can sign up for a complimentary webinar which will overview all of the features and benefits of TripAtlas PRO.

Get $5/month off your TripAtlas PRO membership. Just visit http://tripatlas.com/pro and sign up for a free trial. When you're ready to upgrade, just use the coupon code HBTANews to receive all the features & benefits of TripAtlas PRO for just $29.99/month instead of the regular $35/month.

Tom Ogg
Tom Ogg & Associates
Editor and Publisher

Tom is a 35 year travel industry veteran who’s experience includes over 10 years in sales management for an airline, owning a wholesale Hawaii tour company, starting one of the very first credible “host travel agency models”, has written numerous books about the travel industry including “How to Start a Home Based Travel Agency’, “Selling Cruises, Don’t Miss the Boat” and “Home Based Travel Affiliate, Turn Your Computer into a Virtual Money Machine”. Tom’s newest book “Selling Niche Cruises, How to Turn Small Ships into Big Bucks” was just released. Tom is also the founder of the “CruiseReviews.com” complex of consumer cruise sites including Cruise-Chat.com, which enjoys over 20,000 avid cruises discussing everything under the sun about cruising. Tom also founded the travel industry’s “CruiseAgentDigest” and the unbelievably popular “HomeBasedTravelAgentCommunity.com” social networking site for travel professionals. Tom has trained over 10,000 cruise professionals on land based and cruise seminars on ways to grow their businesses using best industry practices.


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