How Taylor Swift Helped Launch My Travel Agency
Freshly laid off and scared about my new career choice, I offered to help my brother and his now-wife plan their trip to The Eras Tour in London. That one itinerary led to a successful first year as a travel agent.
During a team lunch at work, I found out a colleague was selling two floor-level tickets to The Eras Tour in London at face value.
My brother’s fiancée had been trying to find tickets, but the markup was outrageous, so this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up!
I teamed up with my sister to buy the tickets, and I told my coworker that we would give them to our future sister-in-law as an engagement gift. We were all so excited to surprise her!
A few months later, I was laid off from that job. Good thing I already bought those tickets, right?
I was burned out from corporate life, so I decided to try being a virtual assistant. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I definitely didn’t expect my first gig to be mystery-shopping a dumpster delivery service in Florida. That was $15 well-earned!
Going from a steady tech salary to negotiating your way up from $13.50 to $15 an hour for a data-entry job was bizarre, but I loved the freedom.
There were a couple of travel-related gigs, and given my love for travel, I applied for them. I got a few responses but couldn’t close the deal.
So, I met with a coach, and she said I needed two things: a portfolio and a testimonial. But where was I supposed to get that if no one was willing to risk their vacation on a newbie like me?
The data-entry job and a few award flight searches paid the bills while I worked on becoming a Certified Travel Agent, but those two things evaded me.
I checked in with my brother and his fiancée to see how trip planning was going, and they were overwhelmed. Flights to London during the summer are already expensive, so the concert made it worse.
Plus, his fiancée’s parents were tagging along, and if you’ve traveled to Europe before, you know they have strict occupancy rules that make it difficult to book a hotel room for more than two people.
I felt bad that I had put them in this situation, despite my best intentions, so I offered to help them look for flights. I had done a few jobs finding flights that could be booked with points, so I knew there were promos for flights to and from Europe over the summer.
Turns out there were great deals on Virgin Atlantic from JFK to London. They could go to London for as little as 5,000 points per person! They also wanted to go to Paris during this trip, and I found a flash sale on Air France that brought the price of their return flight down to 15,000 points per person.
After all the flights were booked, they ended up saving almost $8,500! I can still feel the adrenaline rush from putting that all together!
With that vote of confidence, they asked me to help plan the rest of their trip. I was still in the middle of my certification course and now I had my first client!
And I have to admit, it was nice earning their business instead of them just trying to be kind to me while I struggled to get going.
They were patient with me while I learned how the booking platforms worked and how to set up their itinerary in a new online tool I had just signed up for. The principles taught in the course finally started to click as I implemented them in real time, and I began to formulate how my business model would work.
All of my emails with trip updates included some sort of Taylor Swift reference, which I had a lot of fun with, and their trip went off without a hitch! I booked hotels that could fit all four of them and arranged a special surprise for them in Paris.
They went on a hop-on, hop-off bus tour and a high tea in London. Then, they took a class on how to make croissants in Paris and visited Versailles.
I watched the concert through pixelated live streams just so I could be ready to discuss the acoustic set, which was Hits Different / Death by a Thousand Cuts on guitar and Come Back… Be Here/The Black Dog/Maroon on piano. Unfortunately, they went on the night before Travis showed up, but the royal family was at their show, so that’s still pretty cool!
The coach’s advice was still in the back of my mind, so I mustered up the courage to ask them for a testimonial, which they were happy to give. I also created a mock-up of their itinerary along with a sheet showing how they saved thousands of dollars.
Shortly after I updated my profile, I started winning bids and even getting direct requests to hire me!
Ever since I posted their itinerary, I’ve helped people go on their dream vacations to Italy, epic honeymoons across the United States, and bucket-list trips along the coast of California. Couples finally celebrated their anniversary in luxury without breaking the bank, and parents brought their kids along for international adventures without worrying about costs.
I even got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build something that has helped hundreds more. And I’m relieved to say that I’m no longer negotiating for $13.50 an hour, but I look at that first $15 with much appreciation.
The coach was right; my profile needed those two things. But my confidence in this new career needed two tickets to The Eras Tour to get my travel agency cruisin’, and now I can’t stop, won’t stop movin’!
So I’m grateful for a slow but successful first year as a travel agent, and I couldn’t have done it without the man herself, Taylor Swift.
Are you anxious about planning your trip and you just can’t shake it off? I can help you! Click here to book a consultation today!
