Commissions
The hidden cost of reconciling commissions by hand
The visible cost is the weekend you lose to the close. The expensive one is the commission that never arrived — and never got noticed.
5 min read · The TravelIQ team
Read the postBlog
Margin, marketing, and operations
Practical notes on running a travel agency — commissions, leads, advisor sites, and the unglamorous operations underneath them.
Lead Management
Why the first 48 hours decide whether a lead books
Speed alone doesn't close a booking. But being slow reliably loses one — and most slow replies are a routing problem, not an effort problem.
5 min read · The TravelIQ team
Read the postAdvisor Sites
What a branded advisor site actually needs in 2026
A page with a headshot and a phone number is not a site. What an advisor's site has to do now: capture the trip brief, carry the agency's brand, and change without a developer.
5 min read · The TravelIQ team
Read the postAgency Operations
The onboarding checklist that gets a new IC booking in a week
Most advisor onboarding stretches into a month, and not because the work is heavy — because the steps wait on each other. Here's how to compress it.
5 min read · The TravelIQ team
Read the postMarketing
Email that sells trips without sounding like a supplier blast
The unsubscribe usually isn't about frequency. It's about sender. Email that books trips reads like it came from a person who knows you.
4 min read · The TravelIQ team
Read the postCommissions
Splits, tiers, and fairness: structuring advisor pay that scales
Advisor pay is the most sensitive number in the agency. The structure you pick matters less than whether people can see exactly how it works.
5 min read · The TravelIQ team
Read the postAgency Operations
How to run a monthly close in an afternoon
The close that takes a weekend is reconstructing history. The close that takes an afternoon is confirming it. The difference is what you recorded during the month.
4 min read · The TravelIQ team
Read the postLead Management
Assigning leads: round-robin, skills, or owner's call?
Every assignment model fails somewhere — round-robin on fit, skills-matching on setup, owner's call on scale. Pick the failure you can live with, and write the rule down.
5 min read · The TravelIQ team
Read the postMarketing
Reviews are your cheapest acquisition channel. Collect them on purpose.
Every agency says word of mouth is its best channel — then leaves reviews entirely to chance. Collecting them is a process, not a hope.
4 min read · The TravelIQ team
Read the postAdvisor Sites
One brand, fifty advisor sites: keeping it consistent
Give every advisor a website and you get either fifty tiny brands or one agency with fifty faces. The difference is deciding, in advance, what's fixed and what's theirs.
5 min read · The TravelIQ team
Read the post