Travel

8 Answers

I m inclined to agree with the other 2 answers - don t do it.

But if you insist:

1) Your IATA licence is just a starting point. Talk to IATA about how to go about it (their website will give you contacts - last time I looked the UK was run from an office in Madrid!). It is in their interests that you understand what you are getting in to so they will walk you through what you need. You will need to post an insurance bond so you will need a business plan to given them some idea of projected turnover.

1a) Once you have your licence you can start approaching airlines to get authority to issue their tickets. You can t just issue tickets on any airline because you have an IATA licence.

1b) At the same time you might want to negotiate with the airline about what access they will provide you to consolidator fares. In fact you might want to have that in your back pocket before you apply for the IATA licence otherwise your pricing isn t going to be competitive.

1c) Agents don t earn commission any more. You need to add a fee to the fare the airline chanrges to make any money.

2) Go to the CAA and get an ATOL - another bond and the same business plan.

3) Find someone to build your website for you. There are a whole range of companies out there who have differing levels of expertise. Some are UK based, some are based in India, at least one is based in Germany. The cost will depend on what you want to do. Many people find the only way to make money these days is by selling ancillaries like hotel and car hire and insurance and suitcases and car parking and.

4) Make sure your website developer can work with the GDS you choose. All the GDS have APIs but some developers only know one (although they claim to know them all). Negotiating your GDS contract is going to be interesting.

5) Find an accounting package

6) Find a mid office/booking management package (one developer might provide them all but you might find different ones best for your environment

7) Arrange banking particularly wth regard to credit and debit cards. Be sure you understand how much you will pay the card companies and what your exposure to fraud is - travel is an area that fraudsters target.

8) Get a limited company

9) Decide on a trading name. Make sure you can secure ALL the URLs you will need - not just yourname.co.uk but yourname.org.uk yourname.com etc etc.

I m going to stop because much of what I m writing now is just about business but I ll go back to the beginning DON T DO IT. There s too much competition and not enough profit.