Everyone Is Becoming a Travel Advisor. Read This First Before You Do.

If you scroll through Instagram long enough, it can seem like everyone you know is either becoming a travel advisor or seriously considering it. I get it (I really do!) The pandemic made a lot of people rethink what they were doing and why, plus travel came back with extraordinary momentum. Somewhere between the gorgeous hotel content and the "work from anywhere" dream, becoming a travel advisor started looking like a very attractive career alternative. It is, in many ways, an absolutely wonderful career. It's also one that requires considerably more than a love of travel. So let's talk about it.

After being asked for advice on this more times than I can count (usually via email or DM, sometimes in person, occasionally from a stranger at a hotel bar who just heard me rattle off every luxury property in the region from memory), I figured it was finally time to write it all down properly.

Fair warning: I’m going to be honest. Not discouraging… I adore this career and believe there’s always room for exceptional new talent. But I do think it’s important to be honest, because the Instagram version of travel advising alone does a real disservice to people who are considering it seriously.

This is my single biggest piece of advice, and it sounds far more glamorous than it is.

Before you touch a booking tool, before you take a course, before you stress about which host agency to join… how much have you actually traveled recently? Because your customers will expect you to know what you’re talking about. As much as you possibly can, and as intentionally as you can… experience the world as a guest. Notice what it feels like to arrive somewhere and have every detail sorted versus arriving and wondering why the room doesn’t match the photos. Learn (firsthand) the difference between a good hotel and an exceptional one. Eat at places that are and aren’t trending… and form your own opinion. Stay somewhere very expensive and ask yourself honestly if it was worth it.

Everything else in this industry is learnable. Systems, commissions, supplier relationships, booking platforms…you can be trained on all of it. But people don’t want to hire someone who has simply learned the admin… they want someone with authentic taste and lived first-hand experiences. That is what you’ll bring to the table that no certification can give you. It’s also what clients are paying for, even if they’d never articulate it that way.

I want to be clear about what “traveling for work” actually looks like…because it sounds considerably more sexy than it is. I also realize as advisors, we are often complicit in this game of presenting the beautiful side of travel. To be fair, that’s our job: to sell it to you. Because if I book a trip to the Amalfi Coast for you, it’s drinking spritzes on a sun lounger. But if I book a trip for me, it’s seeing 13 hotels in three days, eating at as many restaurants as humanly possible, and testing tour guides I’ve already vetted on Zoom before I even landed (because I’m not going to waste my limited, precious on-the-ground time on someone who turns out to be a dud.) It’s methodical, it’s exhausting, and it’s pretty unglamorous (even if there are absolutely still fun moments).

It also means being willing to invest. I started very humbly, staying in cheap Airbnbs and arranging site inspections at the nice hotels that I wanted to learn. That’s a perfectly legitimate starting point. Over time, I’ve come to believe that a one-hour site tour only gets you so far. Actually staying somewhere gives you an entirely different depth of knowledge that translates directly into better recommendations and more confident client conversations. Today I reinvest a very substantial amount back into the business by staying at these properties myself. That’s a choice I’ve made deliberately (and while my finance teams love to point out how much more profitable I could be… I will continue to advocate for the importance of this being why I book what I do.)

A note on hosted stays: Yes, they do happen along the way and they are one of the fun privileges of this career… but hotels don’t hand them out like candy to anyone, anytime (and regardless of your success, they are never assumed.) With more advisors entering the industry than ever before, hotels are fielding an extraordinary volume of these requests. The ones that land well are the ones that come with solid production behind them, actual relationship and considerate timing. Asking during peak season when a property could sell that room ten times over is tone-deaf, regardless of your numbers. I will share my approach for considerately asking about a stay at the end of this post.

The advisors I’ve seen build something special aren’t simply people who love travel (that’s a given, and it’s not enough on it’s own tbh). The ones who thrive are the ones who can articulate a specific point of view and bring expertise to a specific client.

Before you attend your first FAM trip or research your first itinerary for someone else, sit with these questions: What kind of travel do I care most deeply about? Who do I actually want to serve? Those answers will shape everything that follows: your niche, your marketing, your host agency, your pricing, etc. Don’t skip this step

Everything below is the part I’d usually make you buy me at least a glass of wine to hear: how the money actually works (with real numbers), how to choose a host agency, niching, getting into group travel… and what this career actually requires of your life.