Difference between revisions of "HomeBasedTravelAgent.com"

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Home Based Travel Agent Information Center

Description

I started HomeBasedTravelAgent.com several years ago as a way to offer my books to folks looking to become home based travel and cruise agents. I should tell you a little about myself before going too much further. My name is Tom Ogg and I have been full-time in the travel industry for over 35 years. I have been fortunate to have dodged the many ups-and-downs in our industry and have been entrepreneurial for the last 25 years. Back in the late 1960s I started out as a agency sales rep for Aloha Airlines (I am a surfer and that is what motivated me to join Aloha) and after 12 years, left Aloha Airlines as Sales Manager. I opened a Hawaii wholesale tour company in La Jolla, California (Windansea Vacations) selling Hawaii vacations through travel agents in the western United States. After selling the tour company in 1984, I began acquiring travel agencies and bought and sold dozens of them over a ten year period. I also consulted and brokered travel agencies and wrote the book "How to Buy or Sell a Travel Agency" in 1986.

It became obvious to me that our industry was changing long before the general agency population realized it, so I made changes in the way that we did business. I sold all of our retail agency locations and then acquired one in a geographical area (Civic Center Travel in Escondido, California) that would allow us to open up (non-ARC appointed) branch offices around our centralized location. While the concept made sense, it didn't work, simply because folks that were going to open a storefront wanted to have airline ticketing abilities right on the premises. But, we found out that the majority of folks that responded to our advertisements wanted to work from home. Joanie and I started one of the first credible host agencies in the industry (TBI) and subsequently recruited over 150 independent travel agents all over the country. Here is an article that mentions TBI that appeared in the travel industry trades in 1991. We decided we needed more help to grow the business and sold it to an industry icon with the idea of making it into an industry giant. That was a huge mistake, as the guy then had a couple of strokes with no health insurance and ran out of money.

I had just written "How to Start a Home Based Travel Agency" that was released in 1994 and the book had taken off like a rocket. All of sudden, I was speaking for all the travel industry trade shows, conventions, associations and other groups. Here is a trade article from 1994 about the seminars I was doing. One association, NACTA, (the original association for home-based travel agents founded by Donna Sherf in Dallas, Texas in 1986), approached me to either buy the association, or to help her find a buyer. I really wasn't interested, but my wife, Joanie was. We purchased the association and the rest is history. Today, NACTA has been acquired by ASTA, the world's largest travel agent trade association and continues to represent the Home-Based sector of our industry.

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