Question for this very wise community:
Given all the experience and knowledge a lot of us on this forum have in terms of flights and travel, have you ever considered opening up your own "travel agency", potentially even just to organise flights for yourself/friends/family?
Why I'm thinking this:
- Travel agency deregulation means you don't need any special accreditation per se to start one up in Australia
- Whilst IATA accreditation is hard to get, there are now pathways through intermediaries and travel tech companies that will allow you to book and issue tickets without that accreditation
- Even if you can't ticket at prices that'll beat what Skyscanner and friends can find, surely the ability to change/cancel your own tickets is a massive advantage? No intermediary that charges fees just to process a change, no incompetent agents who have no idea what they're doing, no wait times
The only cons I could think of:
- If you can't maintain the volume and get booted out by whichever intermediary you attach yourself to
- Doing silly things to reservations that result in debit memos being issued - so you'd really only want to establish the business for yourself, or have a trusted group of associates who will do things they truly understand
- Related to the second point, the usual risks of going into business with anyone else is that you may pay for their mistakes.
But still, if you can set up some good boundaries, surely it's an attractive proposition?
