You may have seen internet ads from Globaltravel.com on becoming a travel agent. Is this a scam? You decide.
We joined the GlobalTravel.com travel agent program and here is our experience. They provide a website for your customers to book travel on and you are to get 50% of the commissions from your bookings. That 50% goes up after you earn several thousands in commissions. My partner and I booked a cruise through our website GlobalTravel.com provided. Before we could complete the booking on the website we get a message on the screen saying that in order for us to complete our booking we must call a 1-800 number to complete the booking. After completing the booking through the 1-800 number we did not get any credit on our website for the booking and no commission. We contacted GlobalTravel.com by phone and explained that we booked a cruise and wanted credit for the booking. They indicated it was a simple mistake and that the 1-800 operator should have asked the customer what website they came from so that the agent could get credit and a commission. The funny thing is that the agent never asked that questions. So, is GlobalTravel.com Hijacking bookings away from their agents website with this 1-800 number? Although they say it was a simple one time mistake, I wonder how many other bookings had been hijacked by this 1-800 number that we have never gotten credit for and did not know about. They say none.
After not being happy with this situation and being suspicious about GlobalTravel.coms practices, we contacted GlobalTravel.com and explained the situation and that we did not want to renew the website on the upcoming renewal date. At this time we had several pending bookings that we had not been paid out our commissions on. Global travel indicated to us that and bookings that were not paid by the newel date would not be paid to us unless we renewed our website for another year. They said they would keep 100% of the commissions and not pay us for our efforts in booking those travel customers. The renewal fee would have exceeded the commissions we were trying to collect. So, GlobalTravel.com refused to pay our commissions if we did not renew with them.
Before you sign up for the GlobalTravel.com travel agent program, do your homework. There are much better programs out there that pay 80% commission and dont transfer your customers to a 1-800 number to complete their bookings. They will also pay out all your commissions earned even if you cancel the program. Try looking into theticketcounter.com. They are AAA rated by the Better Business Bureau.
Peter Diaz is president of VoyageMonkey.com Online Travel Booking and author of various published travel articles.