Tuesday, 7 August 2018
August is women's month and we will be focusing on some of the special women who have grabbed hold of the opportunity to start their own travel business from home. Each have different journeys but one thing remains they all have a love for travel and a passion to deliver exceptional customer service. Travel Counsellors changed Roslyn's World for the Better!
I achieved Gold Status – something that I never thought was possible!
I joined Travel Counsellors 8 years’ years ago. When I started I heard about the elite status that the top Travel Counsellors could reach – this was called becoming Gold. To become a Gold Travel Counsellor you had to achieve a large amount of Commission within a period of time. The goal was huge and something that I never deemed possible.
Let me tell you about how I got to achieving Gold Status and what being a Travel Counsellors has meant to me.
When I joined Travel Counsellor all I had ever known was being a travel agent and I had learnt to be a great Travel Agent. Because of my experience and desire to running my own business but also being able to have a better work like balance I decided to pursue my career at Travel Counsellors.
During my induction training at Travel Counsellor I was told that I needed to change the way that I operated and I was shown how I needed change my mind set. I needed to stop operating like a travel agent and to start operating like a business owner.
It took me a couple of years to fully grasp the concept of changing the way that I did business and I had to unlearn a lot of practices that I had come accustomed to. But I finally get it!
I changed my mind set from being a transactional travel agent to becoming a business owner. Not only did I look out for the best deals for my client but also considered the best deal for myself, whilst having my customers best interests at heart.
Increasing your margin is not just about charging more for an air ticket to increase you margin, it’s about using the tools like DMCs and Phenix that Travel Counsellors provides that has enabled me to drastically increase my business. By doing this they came in cheaper than the standard operators, they offered my clients a better experience and they gave me an opportunity to earn more.
I recently had a huge booking - a dream booking – it was for a dream client and instead of offering them what every other travel agent could offer them by going through to a normal tour operator I opted to work through one of Travel Counsellors DMC’s. The result for my client was that the DMC was about R20K cheaper and I made double the commission that I would have made and that allowed me to become very close to becoming Gold.
I kept my head down, used all the marketing tools and the skills taught by Travel Counsellor in there 'going for gold' training programme and I am really pleased to say that I achieved Gold Status, something that I never dreamt possible.
Travel Counsellors has enabled me to reach goals and achieve even more than what I thought was possible.
Travel Counsellors changed Ros’s World – we can change your world too. If this is something that you can relate too then we would love to speak to you.
