Travel Agent Commissions Explained

I often get asked how you actually make money as a travel agent so I have written this blog to help you understand how fantastically lucrative the travel industry can be, especially when joining a travel franchise like ourselves. 

Putting it as simply as possible, when you sell a holiday to a customer the company you booked it with (supplier/tour operator) pays you a commission as a thank you for promoting their business to the customer. This commission level can vary depending on the type of holiday you have booked but as a rough average you can usually expect this to be around 10% of the total holiday cost. 

This commission is not added as a fee to the booking, therefore the customer is not paying you a fee to book the holiday - we make all of our money from the suppliers & tour operators that we partner with! In fact when a customer books a holiday with a tour operator directly they are still paying that 'commission amount' but not getting the service of a personal travel agent included so they are not always getting the best value for money. 

When you join a travel franchise like ourselves you can have the confidence that we have negotiated the best commission rates possible from all of our supplier & tour operator partners, meaning that you will received the highest level of commission compared to if you were to set up on your own! Due to our proven sales and strong relationships with our suppliers this gives us great buying power when it comes to negotiating these commission rates! 

So lets break it down into real money for you! 

During 2024 the average value of a holiday booked was £3949 

Based on an average of 10% commission this would give £394.90 per booking as an average per booking. 

Of course there will be times that the commission will be more than 10% and there will also be times that it will be less. This all depends on the variable commission rates from our trade partners and also any discounts that you decide to give the customer. 

When you join The Good Travel Franchise you retain 75% of all commissions that you make, therefore after the split you would be earning roughly £296.18 per booking that you do. So lets have a look at how many bookings you need to do to make a decent income....

£30,000 per year - 101 bookings (2 per week)

£50,000 per year - 169 bookings (3 per week)

£75,000 per year - 253 bookings (5 per week)

£100,000 per year - 338 bookings (6.5 per week)

£150,000 per year - 507 bookings (10 per week) 

Plus the potential for so much more as your business continues to grow! 

One of the biggest benefits of being a travel agent is building a repeat customer base. If you can get yourself 250 customers who book with you every year without fail then you can almost guarantee that you will be making £75,000 per year (and that's without any new customers on top!) 

So as you can see, the travel industry is very lucrative when it comes to commissions from bookings that you make. Plus when you think of how much time it takes to do a booking, two per week is very little work indeed! One of our agents spent 4 hours yesterday searching for a cruise holiday for a customer and got £2000 commission from just that one booking.

Starting a travel franchise is a great way to break free from the 9-5 and do something that you are extremely passionate about, so why not get in touch today to see if we are the right partners to help you launch a successful travel agent business from home.