If you love doing admin work, going home-based may not be for you!

News / Travel Agencies & Consortia

04-18-2018 5:06 pm

Blake Wolfe

Blake Wolfe

Blake Wolfe is an award-winning journalist and editor, who joined PAX after nearly 10 years in Canada’s newspaper industry. In addition to PAX, his work has been featured in publications such as the Metroland Media group of newspapers and the Toronto Sun.

The recent nationwide survey of home-based travel agents discovered that when they join a host agency, agents spend far less time doing admin work than when they worked in a call center or travel agency.

Apparently, host agencies are taking away a lot of the regular admin duties that every agent has to deal with. So if you love doing all that admin work, you shouldn’t go home-based!

Admin work for an agent can include many things including accounting, ticketing, regulatory reporting, financial reporting, chasing commissions and internal reporting. It can also include marketing. But what home-based agents have figured out is that all of this takes away from actually spending time with clients and selling travel!

When asked “How much administrative time have you saved by joining your host agency?” almost 50 per cent said they have saved time on administrative duties since joining their host agency, with 15 per cent reporting they have saved over 50 per cent of their time and 32 per cent saying they have saved over 20 per cent of the time that they used to spend on admin work.

The survey asked: “Does your host agency provide you with any of the following: Accounting support? Back office support? Saving time and money?" The agents responded:

74 per cent receive Accounting Support
75 per cent receive back office support
89 per cent Save time and money

Another benefit of being supported by a host agency is that your host agency takes care of registrations to ensure that you are meeting all of the regulatory requirements in your province if it regulates the travel industry, and you are also usually affiliated with other associations such as ACTA, CLIA and others. This saves you a lot of time and money.

As to whether home-based agents get as many opportunities to go on FAM trips or attend an annual conference, 70.75 per cent said they had FAM trip opportunities and 55 per cent said their host agency holds an annual conference.

The nationwide survey of home based agents was conducted in January 2018 and was funded by The Travel Agent Next Door and conducted by an independent research company.