Trainee Travel  Consultant Program

This program is designed to teach the basics of travel agency operations to people who have personally traveled in some of the areas we specialize in, namely Asia and the South Pacific. It offers you an opportunity to get a close-up look at the travel industry and evaluate it for a future career, and at the same time offers us an opportunity to recruit new associates for full-time employment.

The training is not a formal, classroom program but rather a "hands-on, on-the-job" training. Due to your past travel experience, it is assumed that you are familiar with the geography as well as the tourist attractions of the above areas. Your training will therefore concentrate on the mechanics of agency operations, such as:

Airline Reservation Systems:

• How to make a flight booking on an airline Computer Reservation System (Availability, Normal & Direct Access, building a "Passenger Name Record", booking seats or special meals, along with all related concepts such as MCT, Waitlists etc.). You can be trained on one of the industry's best systems - SABRE

• How to use the Computer Reservation System to look up air fares and read Fare Rules (basic concepts like seasons, validity, restrictions, booking classes, penalties as well as different fare types - regular economy, apex etc.).

Airline Routings

• Knowing the route network of the main airlines of the Asia Pacific region - Northwest, United, Qantas, Air New Zealand, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, EVA Air, China Airlines, Malaysian Airlines & Garuda. (Eventually, you will need to know the routes of all major airlines that fly intercontinental routes - this list above is just a starter, being the airlines we use most frequently).

Fare Structures

• Net fares and how they differ from published fares.

• Fares from Consolidators (including special procedures, e.g. reservations, ticketing deadlines, application and waiving of rules etc.)

• Using our own internal Fares Database and updating the database with new fares

Apart from theoretical instruction on the above concepts and methods, your training will also include practical involvement with actual bookings. You will be helping our regular staff with various aspects of their day-to-day jobs, and working with them to quote and sell trips to our clients. Ultimately, at the final stages of your training, you should be able to work on simple bookings independently and process a booking from the quotation stage up to the final documentation and dispatch.

It is expected that the training period will last anywhere between 4-6 months (based on a 40-hour week, Monday - Friday, 8.30 AM - 5.30 PM). Compensation for trainees ranges from $9-10 per hour (+ any applicable sales bonus), depending upon prior experience and knowledge. After satisfactory completion of the training program, a permanent position is likely to be offered; it is expected that after 12 months of permanent employment as a Travel Consultant, annual compensation should exceed $30,000.

We must emphasize that the success of this training program depends largely on you - your own motivation, initiative and effort. Since this is not a formal, classroom-type of training a lot depends on how much initiative you have in learning new subjects and putting these to work.

Thank you for your interest, and please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any questions.