How to start your activity as a travel planner?

The profession of travel planner is increasingly sought after in the tourism sector. BTS tourism programs have even integrated this profession into their curriculum. Hiring a travel planner allows one to benefit from a tailor-made trip, adapted to one's desires and budget. The travel planner is an expert in creating travel and stay itineraries, and supports clients throughout their travel day. They can also provide a personalized travel book so that clients can follow the itinerary and keep a record of their memories. Although this profession is often confused with that of a travel agent, the travel planner is distinguished by a more personalized approach and tailored service, but cannot book services. As a micro-entrepreneur, they are required to have professional liability insurance to guarantee the quality of their services. If you are looking to organize a tailor-made trip, do not hesitate to call on a travel planner for a unique and unforgettable experience.

Among the people who want to start a career as a travel designer, there are several profiles. There are people who are already travel agents or who have been travel agents in the past and who want to start as independent contractors. Then, there are people who already have a foot in the tourism industry, who are tourism professionals, guides, or guesthouse or hotel managers, for example, who are in the accommodation sector.

On Vialala, we welcome you whether you are a host, a travel agent or simply passionate about travel!

In 2016, independents accounted for 12% of the workforce.

There are people who are already in the economy, independent workers, for example, Airbnb hosts or Airbnb experience hosts. The idea, for all these people who already have an activity they generally produce, is to offer their clients and travelers to create their itinerary, which includes their own service and others, whether it be the plane ticket, other means of transport, activities on site, car rentals, etc.

There is a third profile interested in this travel planner activity. These are bloggers and influencers who, generally, are not particularly linked to one destination. They are more like professional travelers, and they offer different types of trips according to their specialty. In fact, it can be sports, for example, or it could be diving or something else. 

In any case, these are primarily bloggers, influencers, people who work in travel, generally as digital nomads, abroad or elsewhere. So, there are many different profiles that embark on this activity of creating or organizing trips. And for each, we have some advice to give to help them start their activity well.

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The first piece of advice is to review the information from the previous two articles we did on obligations, as there are many obligations before you can start a travel organizer business, obligations, for example, if you want to be a sole proprietor and other obligations. If you want to be a professional travel agent, for example, or in any case travel professionals, since there is quite strict regulation specifically in France. So, we did Facebook lives to list a little bit of the legal obligations even before talking about skills or experience which make it not so simple.

We have clearly distinguished things and also talked about the different obligations as a self-employed individual and as travel professionals, which require simply having professional insurance, for example. This is called professional liability insurance, and possibly guarantees that allow travelers, your clients, the clients of travel creators to be covered for the booked services and even in case of the travel creator's business suspension. They should still be able to go on vacation if they have paid for their trip before the suspension of this activity.

Actually, before being able to launch any activity involving creation, travel, or organization, it is necessary to closely examine issues related to status. So, we have explained the issues for France. However, depending on the country where you are based, there may be other issues. Therefore, each travel creator must look into the regulations of the country where they are based. And also in relation to their activity, meaning that they will not have the same obligations if they are simply a travel planner offering advice, or if they are a guide, for example.

Let's talk about it!

So today, I will focus more on the skills and experience you will be asked for when you want to create a journey. In fact, there are two main cases: there is the case where you offer advice and where you accompany people by producing services from others and generally, in these cases, you are not necessarily required to be on site. Therefore, it can be bloggers or travel agents. It can also be receptive operators, who do not have their activities or excursions of their own and who go through third parties.

To all these people, we ask to be an expert of a destination or an expert in a type of activity, for example, but you are not necessarily required to live there, because what you will do is advise on an itinerary or a tour. Then, Vialala will take over the travel management part. Thus, for this advisory role, we ask you to be well acquainted with the destination. Most people either live there, if it pertains to a destination, have lived there for a long time or are experts in an activity, such as a sport. Let's randomly pick diving, which is a sport we like to practice in the sea during summer and when the weather is nice, thus, it is well-suited for travels and vacations.

After the second major category, it is indeed the people who themselves produce part of the trip or stay. And here, I'm going to put in this category the guides, the hosts, Airbnb, and simply the people who will offer a local support service. It can simply be a transfer from the airport, and generally, advice is added and a bit more. So, you obviously need to be on-site and you are going to, let's say "match" with a client, you, we will introduce you to clients who either want support or are interested in your basic service, which can be a guided tour, an excursion, or a sporting activity, or even a reception at the airport. And so, it's not exactly the same thing when you start your activity.

In this case, you need to clearly define what you want to do in relation to precisely your status. Do you meet with traveler clients? Or do you simply provide them with advice like a wedding planner who also organizes the honeymoon, for example?

From there, you can start working simply on the type of trip you want to offer. And that will depend on your skills. So, we have already seen that those who have skills to accompany clients will first propose their activities. And then, as they generally know well what happens around their activities and the other services available, they will simply start with the activity they themselves offer, and then build the trip around this activity by suggesting, for example, a hotel they are familiar with in the area, etc. So, this concerns guides and others.

Become a travel planner!

Then, there is a second major category. These are those who are satisfied with giving advice and preparing the itinerary for their clients, so trips planners or independent travel agents or travel coaches. And for them, we will ask them to construct an itinerary and, from a good knowledge of all the providers on site. So, these are either people who are expatriates or who live on site or who work in a travel agency, for example a receptive travel agency, or people who have a very good knowledge of the place and the tourism providers for having lived there for a very long time. And here, we will ask you to know both the hotels and the activity providers as well as everything around. Transport, optimization of the routes, etc. And in both cases, you must be a specialist, either of a destination, or of a type of trip or of a type of activity.

So next, there is something else that is very important, it is to work directly on what you do best, so, and to offer your travels to a given audience. Because indeed, among all the independent travel organizers we already know at Vialala, there are some who are very good, for example at organizing family trips and who are very strong because they have themselves traveled with their families, for example with young children, and so they are accustomed to it. They will be very good at proposing trips to families with one, two, or three children, they know in which countries one is generally well received with children, and in which countries it is a bit more complicated because of the infrastructure, for example.

Sell your trips

So, one must consider who the travelers are that you are addressing, because at Vialala, we do a bit of everything and thus, we have both organizers and travel creators who cater to families. And organizers who cater, for example, to couples or even group travelers. Hence, from the moment you start building your travel idea and questioned who you are addressing, you will get an idea of your audience and an understanding of the travels, itineraries, and tours that you will be constructing.

And from there, you will be able to build your first travel idea. Some of you are already in tourism and already have clients. Indeed, once you have built your service and found a platform, randomly Vialala, which is the only free mobile platform to market your services, you need your first clients.

There is something else that is very important, which is to work directly on what you do best, so, and to offer your trips to a given audience.

At Vialala, we work very hard to create visibility for you by helping with the marketing part, and in using the right keywords, for instance, things like that. But we're not yet well-known enough to be able to bring you clients every day; we do bring them, but not consistently, let's say. And so, a good way to start your business is to look around you to see who your potential clients are, whether among your tourism business clients, if you come from the tourism industry, or simply within your circle or friends of friends, since you definitely have people who fit the profile you have defined, whether they are older people or people your age.

Once you have created your offer and defined your audience, it is indeed necessary to try to share it and create visibility. And as I was saying, we assist you both with the writing of the texts, choice of photos, things like that. But we also help you gain visibility on social networks since we create links and shares and involve the community in sharing everyone's offers. This helps us create a kind of virtuous circle that will assist you in creating visibility.

But it is also up to you, initially, to seek among your existing customers, quite simply, or among your connections, your first customers to get started. So, we are going to summarize a bit everything that we have said in order to start a business as a travel organizer or as independent travel creators. There are several things, several basic prerequisites needed.

It is indeed necessary to comply with the regulations and simply bill either directly to clients or to a platform like Vialala, which will precisely take care of your clients and thus reimburse you their money. And it is indeed Vialala that you will invoice for your services, whether those you produce yourself or those you bring through third-party providers.

Let's talk about it!

And to be able to do that, you indeed need to comply with the legislation, so you must have a self-employed status or a company, for example, if you have a receiving agency and meet the requirements of the regulations of the place where you are established. So, for some of you, it's France but of course, we have organizers and travel creators who are based around the world. Therefore, the first rule is simply to respect the rules and be able to invoice. The second thing to do to get started is simply to clearly define what you want to do. It is not enough to say I want to work in travel and I am good at traveling.

Many of us are passionate about travel. In fact, generally, it's also because we've gotten used to it and have experience traveling. So, indeed make use of your skills, for example, someone who is a diving instructor, their main skill is diving. Someone who is a travel blogger, for example, may not necessarily be a travel pro in the professional sense of tourism, but they are still a pro in that they have extensive travel experience.

Ask yourself, based on your skills, what type of trip you want to create and for whom? In fact, I will go further. Ask yourself all the questions that, in English, start with W.

• What: What trip?
• Who: For whom? With whom?
• Where: What is the destination?
• And Why: What is the purpose? What is the activity? Why are we going? What will the content of the trip be?
   

Once you have answered all these questions, you will be able to precisely define what you want to do. So there, once you have defined that, there is still one step left. It is indeed to gain visibility and promote your offer. So at Vialala we will help you with that, but you need to be able to promote your activity yourself ultimately and bring in your first customers. Most of the travel creators we work with at Vialala have their own website, in addition to being present on our platform. And so, we develop a joint strategy to create visibility for them and promote their activity. For the moment, we are not yet doing advertising, but we will. But it is all this mechanism that needs to be mastered before getting started and that needs to be well studied before creating your first trip or your first quote for a determined client.

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