At the back of the mind of most tour operators are the following questions: “Where shall I sell my tours?”, “ Who do I sell my tours to?” and “How do I sell the most amount of tours possible?” As a resource for the promotion and resale of tours, agents provide a solution to all of these pestering concerns.
No, not the same agents from The Matrix, James Bond, or Men in Black–we’re talking about TrekkSoft agents! Agents, in TrekkSoft lingo, are typically partnering companies, be they in the form of DMO’s, fellow tour operators, or hostels, who, for commission, agree to feature your tours through their company. Depending on the agent, they will choose to either promote you through marketing or integrate in a way that generates livebookings. Both are beneficial ways of growing your company and filling passenger seats.
Agents take the form of different industries and personality types, and as with all business arrangements each carries their own approach and requests. For advice on how to enlist agents, read our previous blog entry here.
Add and define agents:
Now we’ll fast forward to the moment after you have landed an agent. The next step is adding this agent/s to your TrekkSoft account so that you can further get into the logistics. We’ll start at the marketing tab in the admin desk. From the marketing drop down you have access to the Agents, Gift Codes, and Vouchers links (we’ll get to the latter two in a bit). To add an agent, simply select Agents and click on the green “add agent” button at the top of the page. This action will direct you to a page where you’ll be required to fill out agent information. Another way to add an agent or list of agents is to upload a .CSV file that contains all of the same agent information that would be manually input when creating individual agents within TrekkSoft.
Whichever way you choose to add an agent you’ll want to be sure to to input three important components: an agent code, commission, and permission rights.
1. An agent code is a unique code to identify agents within TrekkSoft. This code can also be used as a gift code. In this case when “Gift Code” = “Agent Code”, the agent will receive credit for the booking each time a customer inputs the specific agent code into the gift code field.
2. Agents will promote or sell you tours on a commission based payment. The agent code will compensate an agent accordingly, but you’ll need to set the agreed upon commission rate for each agent individually when creating their profile.
3. When creating an agent, you are able to select from one of four options concerning agent rights: promoter, online agent, offline agent and super agent. The rights of each are defined accordingly:
- promoter: has the ability to make commission from bookings but only has viewing access of the agent desk.
- online agent: may sell trips through an agent log-in but is only allowed to make payments online.
- offline agent: is allowed sell trips through an agent log-in and take money directly.
- super agent: this agent has the same rights as the mandator.
If none of the options from the dropdown menu fit your desired permissions, there are more options below the drop down that you can check or uncheck accordingly.
Once you have entered and saved these three fields, you have successfully created a TrekkSoft agent. You can view a list of all of your agents at any time on the default view of the agent page. On this default page you can also assign users to an agent by clicking on the corresponding pencil or you can delete an agent by clicking on the trash bin (careful this action cannot be undone! ). Remember, there is no limit to the amount of agents that you can have, so add away!
Next step: agent accounting
As mentioned previously, agents operate on commission. The agents accounting tab in your agent desk is the hub for you to stay on top of agent payments and commissions. This page makes management easy with a detailed overview of each agent that has an existing basket for your company.
You can access an individual agent’s payment details page by clicking on the first icon in the agent accountings list. A popup will appear displaying all of the agent’s payment details including agent-held money, agent commission, balance and payments. The balance shown at the bottom should always be the difference between the agent commission and the mandator to agent payments. The balance is even when the commissions to the agent has been paid or the agent got invoiced for the money he owes the mandator and will read accordingly under the payments section.
After reviewing the payment details and, if the balance is not even, you can choose to add a payment at the bottom of the page to settle a pending commission with an agent. If you are deducting commission from the agent to yourself, be sure to add a minus sign before the typed amount. If it is a direct commission from you to your agent, just type in the desired payment amount.
The relationship between agent and tour operator has the potential to be highly profitable when executed properly. Be sure to take care of your agents so they will in turn take care of you!
