If you’re someone who has a passion for luxury travel and enjoys planning trips, you may want to explore being a luxury travel agent or advisor. Advisors who focus on the luxury market specialize in planning five-star trips for clients who want exceptional experiences and high-touch service.
Although these types of trips generally pay high commissions, they also require luxury travel agents to have excellent destination intel and established hotel connections to deliver the attentive service luxury clients expect. Learn more below about becoming a luxury travel advisor.
What is a luxury travel agent?
When most people think of luxury travel, elite properties like Rosewood or Four Seasons in gorgeous places like Monaco or the Maldives tend to come to mind. We’re talking high-end experiences like safaris or private tours, luxurious accommodations over-water villas in Bora Bora or the nicest suites in Paris, and custom itineraries crafted exclusively for each travel group.
Luxury travel planning tends to include more details than an ordinary booking. Here are some things to consider if you want to become a luxury travel advisor:
Clients with high expectations: Luxury travelers often want attentive, uncompromising service and have a desire to enjoy extraordinary experiences far removed from everyday life. Some clients may expect their needs to be anticipated, rather than spoken. Itineraries may change on a whim. And frequent follow-ups are often a must (though this may vary by client).
Unusual requests: Luxury clients may desire custom excursions, such as an off-the-rails safari through the Serengeti, or want to visit unique destinations, like Antarctica. Or they might have unique requests for accommodations, like reserving separate villas for a single couple.
Extensive itinerary planning: Luxury travelers may want their entire trip laid out for them to minimize the amount of research and planning they need to do personally. Luckily, this planning is billable and often includes other commissionable services, like transportation and special experiences.
Expectations are high, so knowing how to navigate these particulars is a necessary skill if you want to become a luxury travel agent. Luxury travelers may have heightened expectations, but they’re also willing to pay top dollar for those experiences, which means greater commission.
How to become a luxury travel advisor
Whether you’re an experienced travel planner who’s interested in leveling up into the luxury market or just looking to start out as an independent travel agent, here are our tips for getting started as a luxury travel agent.
1. Start with the basics of travel planning
If you haven’t booked travel before, you may not want to start with elite hotels, resort buyouts, and organizing luxe itineraries. Instead, it may be helpful to start with standard bookings and trips, and then work your way up. This way, you can build your confidence and experience in a lower-stakes setting so that you’ll be well prepared for luxury travel planning as your business evolves.
If you’re looking for a host agency, Fora can teach you everything you’ll need to know. We offer comprehensive travel agent training on everything from the basics to niche destination planning—plus plenty of support.
2. Become a luxury connoisseur
Luxury travel is one of the most exclusive subsets of an already exclusive industry. Five-star hotels and high-end suppliers (like tour companies) cater to the one-percent, which means most of us will never experience travel at this level.
But in order to become a luxury travel agent, you must be acquainted with the product. No, you don’t have to fork over thousands of dollars to stay at luxury hotels in order to compare them. However, you should make an effort to learn about the luxury travel industry by doing research, leveraging your fellow advisors’ expertise, and doing site visits of five-star hotels when you can.
Developing your eye for luxury is an important step in developing as a travel connoisseur, so you can guide your clients as they decide between properties.
3. Develop your high-touch customer service skills
Knowing about luxury travel is one thing, but booking it is a whole different thing. Because clients are paying five-star prices, they are expecting five-star service—and that white-glove customer experience begins and ends with you.
Similar to a concierge or personal assistant, luxury travel agents do their due diligence in getting to know their clients and catering to their unique needs and travel preferences. When advising on a destination or specific hotel, demonstrate your thorough research, paint a realistic picture of what to expect, and be sure to highlight specific details in line with their tastes.
4. Be conscientious and pay attention to the details
In addition to providing a highly personalized experience, it’s crucial to ensure accuracy when dealing with luxury reservations, transportation, and other logistics.
When working with hotels, be sure to communicate early and often to ensure your clients are treated like VIPs. For luxury travelers, little details like a personalized welcome gift go a long way. (At Fora, we have access to partner perks at the world’s top properties that you can offer your clients). But missing a little detail—like an early hotel check-in—will not be treated lightly.
5. Choose the right host agency
Choosing the right host agency can help you succeed as a luxury travel agent. Ideally, you’ll want to join one that has a sense of community, a large number of partnerships with luxury hotels and travel companies, and services to support their advisors’ businesses.
If you work at a boutique travel agency, you may have fewer resources. Alternatively, agents at a larger, high-end travel agency often gate-keep information (new agents are often viewed as competition), making it tricky to plan trips you’re unfamiliar with. Learning how to become a luxury travel advisor is as much about making connections as it is planning travel.
At Fora, we have a community-based learning model. You'll learn how to become a luxury travel agent online while alongside fellow advisors, and we'll support you every step along the way.
6. Rely on your fellow travel advisors
Even luxury travel advisors can’t know everything about every destination. If a client is looking to you for advice on a destination you know little about, leverage your fellow travel agents. At Fora, our team of experienced industry insiders (many of whom are luxury travel advisors in their own right) knows the ins and outs of luxury travel planning worldwide, and our community app Forum connects everyone so facilitate information sharing.
7. Market yourself
Now it’s time to market yourself as a luxury travel agent. At Fora, we offer content marketing tools and resources to help you look professional and highlight your expertise. But becoming a luxury travel agent largely relies on your first luxury client.
To get your first client, leverage your personal network. Do you know anyone planning a honeymoon? This is often the first (and only!) luxury vacation people take, so consider offering to plan a friend’s wedding trip. And when all goes well, request they share your name with their network, spreading the word on your services.
8. Identify a niche
Specializing in something specific can be a good way to stand out as a new luxury travel agent and land your first clients. You could focus on booking luxury cruises, for example, then branch out as your clients’ needs change. Your clients’ subsequent vacations can serve as opportunities to expand your services.
Get started with Fora
Ready to get started becoming a luxury travel agent? Consider Fora as your host agency. We’ll ensure you thrive each step of the way, and arm you with the tools you need to launch a new travel business, or grow your existing luxury travel business. You’ll get access to our technology (like our integrated booking platform) and community of luxury travel experts. Plus, we handle all the logistics, like chasing commissions, invoicing hotels, and delivering your payments, so you can focus on what you know and love: planning trips.
