What does a travel agent do?
Travel agents help plan, choose, and organize travel schedules. Generally, they ensure that clients can efficiently process their travel plans and get the best travel experience possible. Primarily, they assist individuals, groups, and business travelers in booking their flights and hotel accommodations, buying tickets to events, and arranging their transport from one place to the other. They also provide recommendations for itineraries and offer travel packages from different airlines, hotels, or cruise lines. Travel agents can work as freelancers or mostly be employed by travel agencies.
Travel agent responsibilities
Here are examples of responsibilities from real travel agent resumes:
- Manage corporate travel arrangements for business accounts, including passport and visa documents.
- Book hotel reservations; recommend and cross sell hotel rooms for availability within the Marriott brand of hotels and resorts.
- Service inbound calls using Sabre system by setting itineraries and booking new reservations, also including billing reversals or accommodations.
- Create PDFs prior to being send to print vendors and edit sell sheets for product introduction mailings.
- Assist all travelers with acquiring passport, passport renewals, and visa requirements on any international travel itineraries.
- Create scripts to help agents process long driven formats in Worldspan, Sabre, and Amadeus for quickness and accuracy.
- Coordinate travel arrangements for business and leisure travel clients; operate Apollo computer system
- Book transient reservations, upselling whenever possible to maximize revenue per company policy.
- Assist other travel agencies and customers in preparing reservations, upselling at every opportunity.
- Book car, hotel, Amtrak.
- SABRE bookings of air, car, hotel and Amtrak.
- Accompany groups as an Onsite air agent.
- Arrange travel for several VIP's at various accounts.
- Obtain visas, passports and work permits as required by country.
- Book VIP services such as transfers, meet and greet and private jets.
Travel agent skills and personality traits
We calculated that 30% of Travel Agents are proficient in Reservations, Booking, and AAA. They’re also known for soft skills such as Customer-service skills, Detail oriented, and Sales skills.
We break down the percentage of Travel Agents that have these skills listed on their resume here:
- Reservations, 30%
Communicated all confirmed reservations and itineraries to clients by email, including basic country/destination and airport information that enabled smooth travel.
- Booking, 12%
Performed travel agent duties providing a prestige customer experience in booking tours internationally and domestically for a fast paced tour company.
- AAA, 8%
Assist AAA Members in all areas of travel including airline tickets, vacation packages, cruises, tours and independent travel.
- Credit Card, 7%
Managed computerized bookings and reservations, corporate and private account management, credit card authorizations, billing, and discrepancy resolutions.
- Travel Itineraries, 4%
Well-organized, accurate and detail oriented; planned and organized travel itineraries.
- Reservation System, 3%
Use computerized reservation system to process payments, book transportation and hotel reservations and print required documentation for customer.
"reservations," "booking," and "aaa" are among the most common skills that travel agents use at work. You can find even more travel agent responsibilities below, including:
Customer-service skills. To carry out their duties, the most important skill for a travel agent to have is customer-service skills. Their role and responsibilities require that "travel agents must be able to interact with clients and respond to questions and complaints in a friendly, professional manner." Travel agents often use customer-service skills in their day-to-day job, as shown by this real resume: "support customers with building new travel reservations/modifying and changing existing travel reservations. "
Detail oriented. Many travel agent duties rely on detail oriented. "travel agents must ensure that the reservations they make are for the dates, times, and locations that match travelers’ schedules.," so a travel agent will need this skill often in their role. This resume example is just one of many ways travel agent responsibilities rely on detail oriented: "coordinated leisure itineraries for european, domestic, caribbean and cruise vacations; produced detailed itinerary booklets outlining all trips. "
Sales skills. Another skill that relates to the job responsibilities of travel agents is sales skills. This skill is critical to many everyday travel agent duties, as "travel agents must be able to persuade clients to buy transportation, lodging, or tours." This example from a resume shows how this skill is used: "promote sales of travel to clients and potential clients book travel take payments over the phone, email, and mail. "
Communication skills. A big part of what travel agents do relies on "communication skills." You can see how essential it is to travel agent responsibilities because "travel agents must listen to clients’ travel needs and offer travel advice and information that meet those needs." Here's an example of how this skill is used from a resume that represents typical travel agent tasks: "maintained a working knowledge of internet travel offerings and utilize all internet communication tools book travel. "
Organizational skills. A commonly-found skill in travel agent job descriptions, "organizational skills" is essential to what travel agents do. Travel agent responsibilities rely on this skill because "travel agents often work on itineraries for many clients at once." You can also see how travel agent duties rely on organizational skills in this resume example: "experienced travel agent working with business travel for company and organizational events, including office support and team management. "
The three companies that hire the most travel agents are:
- Volt Systems LLC64 travel agents jobs
- Auto Club Speedway40 travel agents jobs
- AAA AUTO38 travel agents jobs
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Compare different travel agents
Travel agent vs. Cruise counselor
A Corporate Travel Counselor prepares ground travel, hotel, rail travel, and air transport arrangements for customers. They keep accessible online materials to ensure conformity with the client's travel policy. Besides interacting with travel managers, travelers, and travel arrangers, corporate travel counselors also read, master, and expound international pricing procedures and rules. Other duties performed by corporate travel counselors include recommending travelers of various international travel requirements such as immunizations, visas, passports, and more. Also, these professionals deal with different client issues and handle technical issues.
These skill sets are where the common ground ends though. The responsibilities of a travel agent are more likely to require skills like "aaa," "excellent computer," "travel itineraries," and "reservation system." On the other hand, a job as a cruise counselor requires skills like "customer service," "customer calls," "travel arrangements," and "sales strategies." As you can see, what employees do in each career varies considerably.
Cruise counselors tend to reach similar levels of education than travel agents. In fact, cruise counselors are 0.5% less likely to graduate with a Master's Degree and 0.3% less likely to have a Doctoral Degree.Travel agent vs. Corporate travel counselor
As corporate travel agents, they primarily work to coordinate all travel-related concerns such, reservation, flight cancellations, itinerary adjustments, and other unanticipated circumstances happen. They work in travel agencies or departments handling personnel travel details. It is part of their tasks to search and negotiate the lowest possible rates for group business trips. They often work full time in an office setting, but some prefer to work remotely since much of their time is spent on the computer and phones. Moreover, they also gave recommendations concerning weather conditions, local norms, and sightseeing attractions.
While some skills are similar in these professions, other skills aren't so similar. For example, resumes show us that travel agent responsibilities requires skills like "aaa," "credit card," "excellent computer," and "travel itineraries." But a corporate travel counselor might use other skills in their typical duties, such as, "customer service," "travel policy," "sabre gds," and "schedule changes."
Average education levels between the two professions vary. Corporate travel counselors tend to reach similar levels of education than travel agents. In fact, they're 0.0% less likely to graduate with a Master's Degree and 0.3% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Travel agent vs. Corporate travel consultant
The required skills of the two careers differ considerably. For example, travel agents are more likely to have skills like "aaa," "credit card," "excellent computer," and "travel products." But a corporate travel consultant is more likely to have skills like "customer service," "excellent client," "onsite," and "rental cars."
Most corporate travel consultants achieve a similar degree level compared to travel agents. For example, they're 0.9% less likely to graduate with a Master's Degree, and 0.1% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Travel agent vs. Auto travel counselor
Even though a few skill sets overlap between travel agents and auto travel counselors, there are some differences that are important to note. For one, a travel agent might have more use for skills like "booking," "credit card," "excellent computer," and "travel itineraries." Meanwhile, some responsibilities of auto travel counselors require skills like "customer service," "pos," "travel packages," and "foreign currency. "
The average resume of auto travel counselors showed that they earn similar levels of education compared to travel agents. So much so that theyacirc;euro;trade;re 1.0% less likely to earn a Master's Degree and less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree by 0.3%.Types of travel agent
Updated January 8, 2025
