A New Door Opens
What’s the saying … Life is a succession of open doors … clearly, it’s a philosophy that the gang at the Travel Agent Next Door is living by these days … the fledgling independent travel agent group celebrated its six month anniversary late last week (Sept. 19, 2014 to be exact) with over 60 agents signed up and more expected to come on board shortly; it now has 9 employees; and it also used the anniversary occasion to announce that it was launching a new agency support program as it broadened its reach in the independent agency arena.
Travel Agent Next Door founder, Flemming Friisdahl observed: “We are ahead of our projections for independent travel agents and are excited to be officially launching our new program for travel agencies. We are very pleased with the company’s progress.”
As for its new Agency Support Program, Friisdahl explained that it has been designed for travel agency owners with sales up to $2 million who are looking to ease out of the back office and administrative side of operating an agency.
Said Friisdahl: “A lot of owners really love selling travel and working with their customers but don’t love the headaches or the amount of time it takes to deal with the back office and admin. We now offer a program that takes all that away from them for a very moderate cost. The biggest upside is that the agencies that have joined to-date have found that, based on the same sales prior to joining, they take home more money, so it is truly a win win. They used to find all that side of the business draining, and they are thrilled to let us do it so they can concentrate on sales.”
Since its soft launch, the program has been receiving positive feedback as agency owners marvel at the fact that it offers support for telephony, insurance, registrations, membership fees, banking fees, errors and omission, merchant fees and all the back office functions, including taking care of paying the agency’s outside agents if required. And agents only have to select the services that meet their specific needs.
And Friisdahl points out that the program also provides “a web site with a booking engine and we are the only agency support network offering a cruise booking engine, as well as tours and excursions, and we of course also have the Softvoyage, car, hotel and insurance booking engine. We offer all this for a lot less than the agency could possibly do it for.”
Seen in the photo, from top left, are Robert Lambert, Angella Kerr, Nathalie Nelson, Flemming Friisdahl , Suraj Suba. In front, from l to r, are Nancy Aube and Penny Martin. And on Skype, it’s Bernadine d’Sousa.
For more, go to http://www.thetravelagentnextdoor.ca .
