[Thoughts and Advice] Travel Agency

Hey guys,

My name is Matt and I am a senior in college. I have been on BHW here for 3 years now and have learned a lot.

In that time I have a few successful affiliate marketing sites and have started investing in real estate by purchasing multifamily homes with partners.

Now that graduation is around the corner and my projects (both real estate and IM) have begun to be automated so I have more free time available.

I've always wanted to start a travel agency. As an avid traveler myself, I love traveling and seeing new places.

I know I need to be different, here are some quick thoughts I had:

• A travel agency for single people in which they get matched up.
• A travel agency that focuses on historical landmarks (Basically they purchase a package that includes flight + Hotel + Entrances into museums and tours).
• and Lastly, my favorite, a party travel agency.

To elaborate more on the last one, I was thinking of starting a travel agency primarily for people under 30, find them the best party hotels and even host parties in different cities every month. Put people in groups by giving them adjacent rooms and really just matching up groups of young people to enjoy their vacations together.

Now that you have some background about me and the thoughts that roam in my head, what are your thoughts and advice?

Is the market too saturated with travel agencies? Are my ideas stupid? What are some first steps that you would recommend?

Also how much do you think a project like this would cost? I have no problem spending $10,000-$20,000 but if this is going to cost $100,000-$200,000 I'm better of spending that on real estate.

I have done some initial steps like start social media pages and purchase a domain so that it can age but no major steps yet.

Have you thought for a moment about the problems you’re going to get by arranging travel and accommodation for drunken young people?

Think smashed up trashed rooms, think police trouble, think fights, think general thick people who lose passports or travel documents..all for you to sort out.

Travel agencies have been dying out as people just do things on their own. Plus you will have to compete with the giant travel companies SEO wise.

Sure anything is still possible. You just have to find what makes you different than all the other thousand sites and go after it. If it is something you are interested in I would recommend start researching. Find out who you can partner with and so on.

muffinman1214 said:

Travel agencies have been dying out as people just do things on their own. Plus you will have to compete with the giant travel companies SEO wise.

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Yeah, you're not the first person to tell me this.

smacker said:

Have you thought for a moment about the problems you’re going to get by arranging travel and accommodation for drunken young people?

Think smashed up trashed rooms, think police trouble, think fights, think general thick people who lose passports or travel documents..all for you to sort out.

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None of the problems listed would be my fault. Trashed room, charge their card. Police trouble, I hope they have someone to bail them out. Lost passport, good luck getting home.

Am I missing something or is it not my problem?

There are more specialized forums like "travel agent forums". Maybe someone maintains a blog about starting their own travel agency from scratch...start typing words in google and you'll find some interesting stuff.

I would go to some local travel agencies. Ask to be an extern/intern. It's normal thing for a college student to do. Learn it from the inside. Another angle is approach them and say you're in college studying business/travel, and would like to do a report on how their travel agency operates. After a few weeks or months you will know enough to clone their success.

For your party travel agency idea, I don't see why you can't get started for almost free. Make a website ($10 domain/ $5/month server/ $0 design if you DIY a Wordpress template or something similar). No reason for you to have a physical location to begin with---everything is online these days. Upload some packages you created for various cities and what they include (hotels, attractions, car rental, etc). Slap a big price tag on it that will cover your expenses and time. When a customer pays, fill out the info yourself on the hotel/air bnb/car rental/ticketing place for them (I'm assuming that's how it works as a travel agency). For ideas, again, put "travel agency party destination" in google. You'll get lots of ideas to brainstorm for how to make your site look, or narrow down niches like bachelorette parties, Caribbean parties, etc.

Ill stay away from that dying business, you are better of making a website like skyscanner and cashing in the affiliate commisions.
They have a free API but I wouldnt use it because I think they still get a commision

Lots of hotel and airfare affiliate programs exist too with big payouts. Worth looking at if you have not yet.
https://www.offervault.com/hotel-affiliate-programs/
https://www.offervault.com/travel-affiliate-programs/

SeoProMatt said:

Hey guys,

My name is Matt and I am a senior in college. I have been on BHW here for 3 years now and have learned a lot.

In that time I have a few successful affiliate marketing sites and have started investing in real estate by purchasing multifamily homes with partners.

Now that graduation is around the corner and my projects (both real estate and IM) have begun to be automated so I have more free time available.

I've always wanted to start a travel agency. As an avid traveler myself, I love traveling and seeing new places.

I know I need to be different, here are some quick thoughts I had:

• A travel agency for single people in which they get matched up.
• A travel agency that focuses on historical landmarks (Basically they purchase a package that includes flight + Hotel + Entrances into museums and tours).
• and Lastly, my favorite, a party travel agency.

To elaborate more on the last one, I was thinking of starting a travel agency primarily for people under 30, find them the best party hotels and even host parties in different cities every month. Put people in groups by giving them adjacent rooms and really just matching up groups of young people to enjoy their vacations together.

Now that you have some background about me and the thoughts that roam in my head, what are your thoughts and advice?

Is the market too saturated with travel agencies? Are my ideas stupid? What are some first steps that you would recommend?

Also how much do you think a project like this would cost? I have no problem spending $10,000-$20,000 but if this is going to cost $100,000-$200,000 I'm better of spending that on real estate.

I have done some initial steps like start social media pages and purchase a domain so that it can age but no major steps yet.

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Singles
https://www.singlestravelintl.com/


Historical
Literally a basic expedia package with stuff to do while there, nothing really unique

Party
https://www.partyhardtravel.com/

But realistically your target audience in average is not the one with a lot of money.


As to cost. Are you basically just going to be an affiliate of some whitelabel travel solution? if not, expect to pay much more as why would any hotel, airline etc. wotk with you directly if you have low volume? What makes you unique to other travelers? I always here avid traveler etc... but such an overused term these days when people fly somewhere outside the US 1-2 times a year, I'd not call that an avid traveler.

Check out all the travel blogs and how they post trip ideas for a budget, party etc... and you will see that on a budget these

there are plenty of white label travel agencies around bit like dating ones- you choose your niche and you market it= they have all insurances and assurances- you just target your clients

Sounds like starting an affiliate traveling site might be the better option here.

You really would have an easier time running an affiliate site for the travelling and lifestyle niche. You could keep travelling and write about it, and the site revenue would eventually be enough to finance your trips. You'd need some cash to start with though. I can see that you've spent a lot of time thinking about this, though, so I'm sure you have plans upon plans. I hope everything works out — good luck!

SeoProMatt said:

Sounds like starting an affiliate traveling site might be the better option here.

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almost everyone on this forum does affiliate marketing so naturally most replies go for affiliate marketing angle. go on a travel agent forum full of people actually doing it and they might not even know what affiliate marketing is. there's more than one way to skin a cat.

you are having a good idea. But people now looking for more exposure by them self. May be some of them are moving to the travel agent's.
May be you can thinks this too:
Why can't you make a video blog by taking videos by yourself and add them to the YT.
you can gain some followers and earn money through them.
Now this is the trending one.
you can think beyond this too.

uncutu said:

almost everyone on this forum does affiliate marketing so naturally most replies go for affiliate marketing angle. go on a travel agent forum full of people actually doing it and they might not even know what affiliate marketing is. there's more than one way to skin a cat.

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Let's say for the sake of simplicity that the cat weighs 4 kg. ekavet.com's body surface area calculator (http://www.ekavet.com/calculators/cats/356-body-surface-area-bsa-calculation-for-dogs-and-cats) finds the cat's surface area to be 0.26 m^2. The Planck area, i.e. the Planck length squared, or 2.61210003 × 10^-70 m^2, limits us to a finite number of separation points on the skin: 0.26 m^2/2.61210003 × 10^-70 m^2=9.953677 × 10^68. Take that value's factorial to find the number of ways to separate the points, i.e. skin the cat.

Please don't actually try to skin a cat, especially a living one.

*Taken from quora*
But we base it off the fact that op might not be able to keep up