Working With a Travel Agency

There is a point at which organizing a group stops being a favor to your friends and starts being an unpaid job with financial exposure. Knowing where that point is, for you, is more useful than any technique on the rest of these pages. An agency is not a luxury for large groups; it is a way of not personally holding other people's money and other people's deadlines.

What You Need to Know

What an agency actually removes

• The contracting. The agency holds the supplier relationships, so your name is not on the airline's contract.
• The money. Payments go to a business account with its own terms and accounting, rather than through your personal one. See managing group payments for why that matters more than it sounds.
• The deadline management. Somebody else chases names, rooming and final payments.
• The out-of-hours problem. A hotel that has lost your booking at midnight is somebody's job, and it does not have to be yours.

What it does not remove

You still recruit the group, set the expectations, make the judgment calls about who shares with whom, hold the briefing, and lead on the ground. Those are the parts that require knowing the people, and no agency can do them. An agency that offers to do all of it is offering a packaged tour, which is a different product and worth being clear about.

The questions worth asking

• Who contracts with the airline and the hotel, you or the agency?
• Whose account do travelers pay into, and can they pay the supplier directly?
• What are the deposit, name, rooming and final payment dates, in writing?
• What are the cancellation and change terms at each stage, per traveler and for the group?
• What is the minimum number, and what happens below it?
• Who is reachable, on what number, while we are traveling?
• Is anything about this destination going to be harder than usual, and why?

How It Works

An agency working on a group builds the same structure you would: a contract with the supplier held on a deposit, held space without names, a name deadline, a rooming cutoff and a final payment date. What changes is who is exposed to each of them. The judgment is not really about competence; it is about whether you want to be the person the airline calls when the names are late.

The decision is easiest to make honestly by size and unfamiliarity. A dozen friends going somewhere you know well is a trip you can run. Forty people, an unfamiliar destination, minors in the group, or any situation where you would be collecting substantial sums, all point the other way. So does a simple test: if the trip failing would cause you personal financial difficulty, you are carrying too much of it.

What to Do Before Your Trip

• Decide before you approach anyone what you want to keep and what you want to hand over.
• Ask the seven questions above and get the answers in writing.
• Check whether travelers can pay the supplier or the agency directly rather than through you.
• Confirm what support exists while the group is traveling, and on what number.
• Read the cancellation terms as though the trip will be canceled. Occasionally one is.

Important Considerations

Several U.S. states regulate the selling of travel, with registration requirements that differ from state to state. This is one of the practical reasons a group leader recruiting beyond their own circle may be better placed working with an established agency than acting alone, and it is a question to ask a qualified adviser in your own state rather than to settle from a general guide. Nothing here is legal or tax advice.

Whatever arrangement you reach, the written group contract governs the trip. If something an agency has told you verbally is important to your group, ask for it in the document.

Tips for Group Travelers

• Approach two or three and compare the deadlines and the terms, not only the price.
• Ask what has gone wrong on a group like yours before, and what was done. The answer tells you a great deal.
• Be clear about the parts you intend to keep, so nobody assumes the other is doing them.
• Introduce the agency to the group by name and number, so travelers know who to contact for what.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Choosing on price alone. The terms and the deadlines are the product.
• Assuming the agency will recruit for you. Filling the trip remains your job.
• Leaving the division of labor vague. Write down who does what.
• Not asking about out-of-hours support. That is much of what you are paying for.
• Deciding too late. The value is highest before the space is contracted, not after.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Travel Tips

• Group leader resources, the section this guide belongs to.
• Becoming a group leader
• Managing Group Payments
• How to Organize an International Group Trip

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