Top 15 Travel Agent Skills to Stay Top in Your Career

This post provides important travel agent skills and qualities that you can develop to excel and succeed in your job and career.

The travel industry is one industry that has experienced a lot of boom in recent years.

This is due to the fact that a lot more people are developing interest in the industry due to the comfort and to an extent the fun and entertainment it brings with it.

Due to the increase in clients who want to be attended to and given the platform to experience safe and fun filled travels, the need for more capable and experienced travel agents to help cater for calls, mails, and other forms of application by clients.

A travel agent is a person who serves as a link to private or government owned travel agencies.

Travel agencies cater for travels and tourism as well as other related services like car rentals, cruise lines, hotels, railways, etc.

Here are top skills and qualities you need to have to be a top performing travel agent:

Knowledge of the travel industry
Good customer service
Listening skills
Passion for travel
Detail oriented
Organizational skills
Multitasking
Excellent communication skills
Excellent IT skills
Patience
Basic business skills
Problem solving skills
Time management
Team work
Knowledge of mathematics and geography.

Knowledge of the travel industry

As a travel agent, you need to be vast in the knowledge of the industry.

This is a booming industry that generates a lot of revenue yearly, so you have to know every bit of thing in the industry.

More so, questions and enquiries from customers should also be a good reason why you should adequately educate yourself on the travel industry.

Customers will make do with a confident presentation or answer from you the travel agent. This is important to you.

Lastly, it is good for your confidence level. Meeting up with different customers from different geographical locations may expose you to a whole lot of customer oriented relationship which will need you to be top of your job and give competent explanations for questions and enquiries channeled towards you.

Good customer service

As earlier stated, the travel industry is a booming one because of high patronization from people who are developing more and more interest in the travel industry.

Therefore, to maintain the high patronage, there is a need for you to be excellent in this aspect.

Right from the time you leave your house to your place of work, the satisfaction of the customers out there should be your heartbeat, and giving them the best they deserve should be something that gives you more concern.

One thing you should learn to do always is to make sure that you give the customers a sense of belonging and a hope that they can get the best of what your travel company can offer.

You have to make the satisfaction of the customers your topmost priority.

Listening skills

Good customer service skills should start from your ability to listen carefully to what the customers want and how they feel they should be treated.

That is the starting point of being a good travel agent. You have to be sensitive to what the customers say.

To be a good listener to your clients in the travel industry requires patience.

You have to get used to their naggings, the complaints and their outbursts out of perceived discontentment.

Though it is something unpleasant to you but be patient enough to listen to what they have to say.

Remember that they deserve the best and giving them the best starts from listening to them.

If you miss this first step, the the service you render to them may turn out to be something they wouldn’t like.

So, now you see why you need to sharpen your listening skills.

Passion for travel

A good travel must have passion for travel. You may not be a good travel agent if you don’t have the passion for travels.

This is true and you need to understand that you cannot ably represent what you don’t have passion for. So steer up that passion again.

Sometimes, your passion for travel can encourage your clients to try out new adventures in the industry.

If you have the passion and your clients sense the passion, they get excited and will like to try out something new, probably to experience that passion.

Passion you know is contagious.

You have to give the customers a reason to be excited.

If you want to see that desired passion from them, you have to make it happen through showing that passion in you.

This is one way you can get the passion into them.

Detail oriented

This is in addition to your listening skill. When you listen, you pay attention to every detail of the demand of the customers.

You need to be in your right mindset in order to ensure that you pick even the smallest detail of whatever the client says to you.

It is important that you do make assumptions as to whatever the clients want.

You don’t assume and you do not overlook any detail or information at your disposal.

Failure to be detail-oriented can greatly affect your relationship with the clients.

There is no need to say that a given instruction is not necessary.

Always remember that you have to serve the clients and give them what they want.

If at all there is a reason why something is not obtainable, you have to let them know.

Organizational skills

This partly has to do with multitasking ability. Imagine a scenario where there are many calls to attend to, many mails and applications to be sorted out and you have to do them within a short while.

You are not to apply laxity to your job.

You have to learn to prioritize your activities. It can be on first come first serve basis.

But no matter how you fancy doing it, the most important thing is to make sure that you are good in organizing your activities.

It is a sign that you are good in your job and you can make a good manager in the future.

Organizing your activities makes the work a lot easier for you.

You don’t have to be ignorant of the fact that you are working towards satisfying the clients and also saving their time.

Time is an important factor in this industry and you need to learn organization skills.

Multitasking

Multitasking means that you have many activities and jobs to do almost all at the same time and you have to do those jobs.

So, in effect we are saying that you have to develop the capacity to handle many jobs simultaneously. It is possible.

You don’t need to be tied down to only one thing at a time at least not when you have a lot on your hands.

This will certainly delay results and make you find yourself in a situation where you are running out of time to deliver the necessary services to the clients.

Truth be told, the travel industry puts you in a situation where you have a lot of calls and a lot of applications or mails to sort out.

You have to find a way to be fast enough to handle such energy sapping activities simultaneously or rapidly enough to meet up with deadlines.

Multitasking is one way to do that.

Excellent communication skills

There is no industry in the business world that overrules the importance or vitality of communication.

Communication is a lifeline and a livewire for any industry.

This applies to the travel industry. There is a place for listening and there is a place for giving out information and getting feedback.

The travel industry is where the need for effective communication cannot be totally ignored.

You are faced with the prospect of facing clients either through online applications or by physical interaction, and whichever way you meet with clients communication is the bedrock for better understanding.

It is not just enough to know what to say but also wisdom to know how and when to say it to clients.

This can make a difference to the clients and can give them a reason to either continue working with you or work with your competitors.

Excellent IT skills

We cannot sweep this under the carpet, not now not tomorrow because, IT skills has come to stay.

Looking back to about 50 years ago, you can see the giant strides that have been made in the business world due to the heavy involvement of IT.

Information technology remains a skill that anyone that wants to remain relevant in the business world must have.

This is because, as the days go by, the need for the involvement of more technology to be used in the business world continues to be on the all-time high.

First, as a travel agent, you have to understand that you need a lot of IT skills, like being conversant with the use of computer and other IT gadgets.

Patience

Dealing with different clients daily is never going to be an easy job, neither is it going to be a walkover.

Clients can be troublesome in their own way through their endless nagging, complaints and late orders.

These are some of the things they do and it is frustrating.

Sometimes, you have to patiently listen to what they have to say and be calm enough not to react negatively to some unwholesome attitude and verbal outpour from different clients.

This is one skill you will need in order to succeed in your job.

You also apply patience in the area of making some explanations to them as to the nature of the travel industry.

Patience is needed because you may need to recap or go through the whole process again due to some client that may be slow in understanding.

Basic business skills

The travel industry is a business and need to be seen as such. It is a business because it yields revenue and at the same time caters for your pay check.

This is why you need to see it as a business and therefore need to have some basic business skills for you to succeed in it.

You need to understand customer behavior as one of the skills you need to have in your job.

It is almost impossible to succeed in your job as a travel agent if you don’t understand the theory of customer behavior and their change in taste and purchasing power.

This is because, when there is change or downturn in customer patronage, it has a lot to do with either change in taste or demand.

So, you need this knowledge every day to stand a better chance of getting the best out of the clients.

Problem solving skills

When clients come to you to make enquiries or complaints what they have in mind is not for you to argue with them or give excuses, rather what they want is solution to their problems in regards to travels.

This is what they assume you are there for and they are not wrong in their assertion.

As you are rightly called, being a travel agent means that you are a representative of your travel company and as such should retain some abilities to solve most customer related problems in regards to travel.

This is also part of your job.

This is why you must be well-trained and give yourself to constant upgrade in the travel industry.

The more grounded and well skilled you are in this industry, the more possibilities of clients getting their problems solved within a short time.

Time management

This is a very important point we need to look at. Time means a lot to you as it means to the clients in need of your services.

The customers wish that you can help them accomplish a lot within a short period of time.

This is where you have to learn the principle of time management.

Time management is needed if you are to serve the clients simultaneously and timely.

You have to be conscious about activities that distract you from your major work.

Those activities should be scrapped out of your diary in order for you to serve the clients and make sure you do that within the stipulated time.

Good planning of your activities and multitasking are two good methods to consider if you want to attain the height of managing time.

You plan well and execute your job according to your plan and also imbibe the capacity to handle more than one task at the same time in order to save time.

Remember that time is an important factor in every business.

Team work

As a travel agent, you have a lot of people to collaborate with.

You have a lot of people you need to keep in touch with in order to be able to do an effective job.

This is why you will need to have that team spirit in you to be able to work well with people.

If you desire to get the best out of people, then you need to get the right people and work with them with the right purpose.

What it entails in this context is that you need to keep in touch with other travel agents in the industry and enquire some of the latest practices that can help you to be a better travel agent.

Team work is possible if there is a corresponding team spirit.

When you leverage on the abilities of other experts in the industry, you get good knowledge and also some other skills you will need to carry out your job effectively.

Knowledge of mathematics and geography

Knowledge of mathematics in the travel industry is essential. You need to have the ability to conduct basic arithmetic operations.

You will add, subtract, multiple, and divide figures. Costs and other mathematical operations are involved in your job.

Then comes the knowledge of geography; you need to be able to educate the clients on the nature of the place they intend to travel to and what is obtainable there.

You may need to discuss land shape, rivers, oceans, or other geographic features of the place, especially if it is their first time traveling to that place.

These two skills are combined in one point. Mathematics is important likewise geography.

When you explain to the clients the nature of the place they want to go, it creates the insatiable desire in them to be there at all cost.

So, you have to be adept in the knowledge of geography.

Travel Agent Skills for Resume

If you are writing a resume or CV for a travel agent job, you can create a convincing skills section by applying the travel agent skills and qualities discussed above.

This will make your travel agent resume/CV more attractive to recruiters/employers as it shows that you have the qualities and skills needed to succeed in performing the role of a travel agent.

Conclusion

The travel and tourism industry remains one of the major industries that continue to produce a reasonable amount of revenue for both private and government agencies.

However, the survival of this industry can be determined to an extent by the individual competence of the agents.

That is why the skills and qualities highlighted on this page are a must for travel agents to have to succeed in the industry.