How To Become A Tour Agent: What It Is and Career Path

What is a tour agent and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

2 min read

Quoted expert

Diane Petras

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a tour agent. For example, did you know that they make an average of $15.07 an hour? That's $31,350 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 20% and produce 9,100 job opportunities across the U.S.

What general advice would you give to a tour agent?

Diane Petras

CTIE, president, The Travel Institute

Agents should expect business to return when the pandemic passes. In fact, there is already significant, pent-up demand with consumers who want to travel. Short-term, this demand has translated into 1) greater interest in domestic travel as a more comfortable, familiar option for now, and 2) bookings for travel itineraries a year or more out. Longer-term and post-pandemic, the travel industry is expected to fully recover for both national and international travel bookings. Both short- and long-term, agents need to understand and communicate with travelers on new health-related travel protocols and, possibly, emerging health-related ratings for suppliers and destinations. In the meantime, given the fluidity of changes in travel restrictions and destinations, agents can also expect great professional camaraderie as agents are sharing dynamically-changing travel and destination details so that the industry can best serve all travelers.

ScoreTour AgentUS Average

Salary

2.4

Avg. Salary $31,350

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.0

Growth rate 20%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

2.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.11%

Asian 9.83%

Black or African American 6.28%

Hispanic or Latino 13.70%

Unknown 4.51%

White 65.56%

Gender

female 67.91%

male 32.09%

Age - 52

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 52

Stress level

7.0

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

6.6

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

7.4

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a tour agent

Explore tour agent education requirements

Most common tour agent degrees

Bachelor's

41.7 %

Associate

20.9 %

High School Diploma

20.9 %

Start to develop specific tour agent skills

Skills	Percentages
Sales Floor	50.00%
Data Entry	16.59%
Reservations	10.10%
CRS	7.50%
Front Desk	6.42%

Complete relevant tour agent training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New tour agents learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a tour agent based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real tour agent resumes.

Research tour agent duties and responsibilities

Utilize OpenTable to take and manage reservations both from incoming calls and ones request online.
Provide excellent customer service through making group reservations and tour reservations.
Greet and check in guests for their respective tour presentations, look up accounts, and input guest information in CRS.
Perform travel agent duties providing a prestige customer experience in booking tours internationally and domestically for a fast pace tour company.

Prepare your tour agent resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your tour agent resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a tour agent resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable tour agent resume templates

Build a professional tour agent resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your tour agent resume.