One of the best ways to make free travel a reality, is to learn more about becoming a group travel leader. Almost all travel providers provide a free trip when a group leader signs up a certain number of people for a tour, or travel event. This holds true for cruises as well. Once you have booked 15 passengers on a cruise, most cruise companies will give you a free cruise. (Can you image booking 15 guest on a world cruise, and you go for free?)
The attributes of a good group leader is someone who is out going and has a true love for travel. The ability to share information, and create a stir about a trip that you are promoting to friends, co-workers, and friends of friends is one of the major keys to becoming a successful group leader.
There are many different options for tours, group travel, vacations and event travel. Selecting a popular and affordable group tour for your first travel event, would probably be a wise idea.
One important task would be to gather the contact information of everyone you come in contact with who is interested in travel. This is also a good time to find out what destinations people are interested in, and when they would like to travel.
Once you do your research on group travel, you will learn quickly that the most well paid group leaders are the ones who do group cruises. This is an extremely lucrative niche for travel professionals and group travel leaders. There is a learning curve involved, however, it is fun and made easy by the online training programs of some of the larger cruise companies.
Finding a travel agency to work with will take a little time and research. Most of the agencies online charge a fee and offer a variety of support services. However, there are a select few, travel agencies who charge no fees, and provides excellent, online training for their outside agents.
Many group leaders get involved in group travel in order to travel for free. However, many of those stay in the business full-time because, the financial rewards for group travel can be high. One of the first things a group leader learners, is the retail travel agent is often times stuck in the office booking travel for a large number of individual clients.
A professional group leader is rarely in the office and usually does not keep office hours. It takes a special type of person to travel with groups. You have to really "like" people. And it helps if you have natural leadership abilities, alone with patients. Traveling with adults can be worse then traveling with a group of teens. At least with teens, you lay down the rules and what happens if the rules are broken. But with adults, you have to treat them like adults, fully realizing that they can get into far more trouble than the teenagers.
If you find the idea of becoming a travel group leader excites you, do your research and learn more. Join the growing number of successful group travel leaders.
