A day in the life of a travel counsellor is pretty hard to predict

A typical day in the life of a Travel Counsellor is pretty hard to predict. It more or less always starts with checking my ‘dashboard’ on the booking system to ensure there aren’t any urgent actions for imminent departures or emails from clients already in resort. If so, then I’d deal with these – from booking transfers, excursions or perhaps organising a restaurant booking and surprise if it’s a big anniversary or honeymoon for instance.

From there I like to work on my enquiries first to ensure I have a quick turnaround time and clients aren’t kept waiting. Often at least part of the enquiry will mean reaching out to third party suppliers for bits and pieces of a holiday package (transfers, attraction tickets, or sometimes even the whole thing like a cruise or group tour) and so it’s good to get the ball rolling on this to avoid any delays.

I will check my social media marketing plan early in the week and create any content I need for the week. I tend to do this in a block and then schedule what will go up when. I have themes to my socials and have a running theme of ‘Alphabet Tuesday’ ‘Sunday Destination Special’ and ‘Wednesday Blog’ interspersed with whatever catches my eye.

If it’s near to a customer departing on their holiday then I will be doing some admin tasks including printing their paperwork, confirming elements of their holiday with third party suppliers and checking them in. This is always an exciting time as it means they’ll soon be off and able to enjoy their holiday that they’ve looked forward to for so long!

Probably towards the end of the day I’ll be checking I haven’t missed any emails, enquiries or messages, either on social media or in my inbox, and getting up to date on my finances - the less glamorous side of running an independent travel agency for sure.

I’ll pick up my daughter from nursery and put the laptop away for a few hours until she’s safely tucked up in bed. I love being able to juggle and choose the hours that I ‘work’ – it really doesn’t feel like work as I absolutely love making people happy by booking them their dream holiday.

Being a Travel Counsellor means juggling a lot of hats, but it definitely means adding lots of destinations and holidays to my bucket list of dreams…I just need to book them now!