I have a new venture!
In December, I joined Travel Best Bets as a ‘Connected Agent’, one who works from home instead of in the office. I hope that in a few years I will be able to transition out of supervising assistants in providing speech therapy. I will probably continue to see a few of my own clients, because I really do love helping adults whose first language is not English, learn to pronounce English better so that their accent doesn’t hold them back in their careers.
When this opportunity came up, I took it because I was so frustrated at not being able to cancel my flights when I had to cancel my 3 month Australia trip in 2019 because I couldn’t get through to them, and because I booked my own flights, I didn’t have access to the agent phone lines to cancel. So I was just a ‘no show’. (I did eventually get my money back though, because everything was booked on a credit card that has trip insurance as one of its benefits.) Along the line, I do hope to make some money on commissions by building a clientele, but my main motivation was to get access to deals and booking engines as my own agent so that I am never left hanging again.
For the last few months I have been taking a number of training courses on the things one needs to know to be a travel consultant. It is very interesting and there certainly is a lot to learn! So, I rebooked my friend Linda’s and my Baltic cruise for the end of August 2022 with the agency it had originally been booked through (I had to go with them to access all my future cruise credits from the cancellation), and then I did my own booking for a repositioning transatlantic trip to the US, on the same ship immediately following.
Last week a great looking opportunity came in to my email from MSC for a 20 night repo cruise from Dubai to Italy through the Suez Canal in the spring of 2022. One of the other agents at Travel Best Bets has a group block of cabins on this cruise and is willing to let me work with her to fill the block. This is my first opportunity to be an agent for others in coordinating not just someone’s vacation, but jumping in with both feet into organizing a group booking.
This is all very energizing and just the boost I need, after almost a year of living alone in a new city during Covid!
