Nothing is more stressful in a travel agent’s professional life than living with the risk of having to cancel tours. After putting in hours and hours of work, you realize that you don’t have enough paying customers to cover the cost of a trip. Not only is this harmful to business, having to inform your customers about tour cancellation is a truly soul-sucking experience.

A profound travel agent demands more value from travelling products. Standard tours may be cheaper, but it’s hard to put a margin on a product that has many equivalents. In advanced markets, the end-customer is only willing to pay extra if he or she sees extra value in the tour offered.

A relaxed travel agent is a clever travel agent. What you need from your DMC partner are standard and time-tested travel programmes that are profitable, easy-to-manage and stress free

Spiritual travel agents realize that what tourists seek most in their travels is a spiritual uplift. They target spiritual tourists and offer them unique pilgrimage tours. Therefore, what they want most from their DMC partners in different countries is experience and skill in organizing faith-based pilgrimage tours.

Contrarian travel agents look for opportunities outside standard touristic packages. They realize that authenticity-seeking tourists will pay a larger premium for unique thematic tours. When talking to their DMC partners in different countries, they first want to hear about alternative ways of experiencing those countries.

Why work a lot with low profitably if you can work less with high profitability? That’s how elite travel agents think. It’s not easy to become a haut monde’s travel agent, however, because one has to earn the trust of elite tourists, and that is no small feat. But if you do, your life quality as a travel professional (and your margins) can skyrocket quickly.