Working as a Travel Agent in London

February 2003 | Kirsty Henderson

Oxford Circus is one of the busiest shopping areas in London and I managed to land a job as a travel agent right in the thick of it all just a few shop fronts up on Regent Street. This meant being thrown onto one of the busiest high streets in the UK into a job I had never done before. A pretty interesting experience, to say the least!

I was living up in Glasgow, Scotland when I got a call from Travel Cuts, a Canadian travel agency with one office in the UK based in London. At first I thought the call was about a flight enquiry I’d sent off to them by email but quickly remembered that I had sent off an online job application to them while I was still in Australia. I was excited to hear that I had been offered an interview for a vacancy that needed to be filled asap.

Having no desire to live in London, I was a bit apprehensive but decided that being a travel agent sounded like a pretty good gig and hopped on a bus a few days later for the 8 hour journey down to the interview. Things went well and I was offered the job on the spot so bussed it back up to Glasgow to grab my stuff and a week later I was settled into a backpacker’s hostel and working as a travel agent in London.

Things went well at first. Being a Canadian company there were lots of fellow Canucks around and the office had a nice, friendly atmosphere. After a quick office tour and a few introductions it was time to get my ass in gear and learn how to book flights.

I’d taken a lot of flights in my life but had never realised what a nightmare it was to actually make one, lousy booking. There’s so much to it… on one hand you’ve got to make sure the seat is available with the airline in the right class, then you have to match the availability up with the prices you have listed in various other systems, then you have to check the rules for each price including age limits and restrictions on days you can fly etc. Then after booking the patient a seat you’ve got to take payment through a confusing system and if they decide not to pay in full you’ve got to keep on top of any changes in the ticket’s price and rules. On top of this you’re meant to answer all of their questions from what time it is in Timbuktu to which hand to wipe your ass with in Thailand. Then you have to try to flog insurance to up your commission and achieve your targets so you get a bonus that only barely brings your crappy salary up to a living wage.

In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t think being a travel agent was the dream job I had hoped it would be. I was thrown into the deep end and was booking complicated round the world tickets by the end of my first week. There’s so much to learn and I spent most of my time either asking questions because I was afraid of making mistakes or fixing major cock ups that would cancel people’s plane tickets or cost the company loads of money.

But my six months working there was a good laugh. The office was pretty laid back and generally fun and I probably would have packed it in if the people hadn’t been so nice. In the end though my crappy travel agent skills got the better of me and I was made redundant. Business wasn’t very good because SARS seemed to be keeping people away from Canada and that was where most of our business came from.

But I’m glad I landed this job because I was able to see first hand how crappy life as a travel agent can be and secondly because it got me down to London and once I got myself into a better (easier!) job that paid a liveable wage, the fun really started!