Do you have questions about how to become a travel agent in Miami, Florida? If so, this page might help you answer some of them.

Tourists visiting Miami can go visit attractions such as Bayfront Park, Calle Ocho, Bayside Marketplace, and Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. Any travel agent should be able to refer their customer to these locations. Besides local attractions, a travel agent also has to be able to refer their customers to tourist attractions all over the world. http://www.planetware.com/tourist-attractions-/miami-us-fl-miami.htm

With the rise of travel websites such as like Expedia.com, Travelocity.com, Priceline.com, Hotwire.com and Kayak.com people can now book their own air fares, hotel accommodations and rental cars. These websites are conveniently accessible 24/7 and making bookings and reservations can be done with the click of a button. Using a travel agent to take over the hassle of finding cheap air fares, cheap hotels, and cheap rental cars has its benefits tough. A travel agent often has access to travel deals and travel discounts that are not available to the general public. Travel agents are travel experts nowadays; they are well traveled and can often tell you about vacation destinations from their own experience. Some travel agents even specialize in areas such as cruise travel, group travel, business travel and honeymoons. http://careerplanning.about.com/od/occupations/p/travel_agent.htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos124.htm

On this page you will find step by step information about travel agent educational requirements, travel agent salary, travel agent licensing and much more. Hopefully this page will give you a good idea of what is expected of a travel agent and what you can expect.

EMPLOYMENT: When it comes to the jobs available for aspiring travel agents in Florida, the cities Orlando, Miami, and Tampa are good locations to start looking since those have the most job opportunities in this field. Fewer opportunities are in the cities Tallahassee, Gainesville, and Cape Coral. Most likely you will start out in an entry level position at a travel agency. This can be as a receptionist or reservations clerk. You can learn by watching other travel agents go about their day to day tasks and over time you may get more responsibilities. This entry level position can eventually lead to that job as a travel agent. If you cannot find work at a travel agency, you can always offer to work for free as an intern. This will look good on your resume and might help with future employment. You might also want to take a look at the Mahalo page 'How to write a resume' for useful information. http://www.citytowninfo.com/employment/travel-agents/florida

SALARY: Of course when you are looking for work you want to have some sort of idea of what kind of salary you can expect. The highest salaries in Florida are in the metro areas of West Palm Beach, Jacksonville, and Fort Walton Beach. Miami's 2010 base annual salary for travel agents is estimated at $29.563. Keep in mind that employers prefer to hire people with some form of travel agent training. Find more on this in the next paragraph. http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layoutscripts/swzl_salaryresults.asp?op=salswz_psr&jobfamilycode=23&txtKeyword=travel+agent&hdOmniNarrowDesc=Materials+Management&hdZipCode=33131&hdOmniTotalJobsFound=20&pagefrom=selectjob&hdJobCategory=AR02&hdGeoLocation=Miami%2C+FL+33131&countertype=1&totaljoblistnum=2&joblevelcode=&hdCurrentPage=1&hdNarrowDesc=Hotel%2C+Gaming%2C+Leisure%2C+and+Travel&hdLocationOption=1&hdViewAllRecords=0&hdJobTitle=Travel+Clerk&hdSearchByOption=0&hdKeyword=travel+agent&rdbSearchByOption=0&hdStateMetro=107&jobcounter=8&hdSortBy=0&hdJobCode=OF13000058&hdJSBoolDisplayAdvertisement=&hdAjaxKeyword=travel+agent&hdAjaxKeywordWithOR=%23travel%23+OR+%23agent%23&hdAjaxDisplaySection1=0&hdAjaxDisplaySection2=1 http://www.citytowninfo.com/employment/travel-agents/florida

HIGH SCHOOL: The minimum requirement to become a travel agent is to graduate high school or have the equivalent of a high school diploma. The Mahalo page 'How to graduate high school' can give you some pointers here. Because employers prefer to hire people with some form of travel agent training, it's best to look for this at community colleges, vocational schools, online studies and in adult educational courses. Many courses are available either full time or part time and some colleges even offer degrees in travel hospitality. http://www.careeroverview.com/travel-agent-careers.html

SCHOOLS: Some schools in Miami that you can go to for additional training geared towards becoming a travel agent include:

• ■ Florida International University, 11200 S. W. 8 Street, Miami, FL 33199,

Phone: (305) 348-2000. This school was established in 1965 and offers classes in tourism and travel. http://www.citytowninfo.com/school-profiles/florida-international-university

• ■ Miami Dade College, 300 NE 2nd Ave., Miami, FL 33132-2297, Phone: (305) 237-8888. This school opened its doors in 1959 and provides classes in tourism and travel. http://www.citytowninfo.com/school-profiles/miami-dade-college

If you prefer to study in your own time, you can do so by going online and signing up for online classes. Some of the schools for online classes include:

• ■ Stratford Career Institute: Established in 1991, offers classes in travel and tourism. http://www.citytowninfo.com/school-profiles/stratford-career-institute
• ■ Central Pennsylvania College: Established in 1881, offers classes in travel & tourism operations. http://www.citytowninfo.com/school-profiles/central-pennsylvania-college
• ■ Penn Foster Career School: Established in 1890, offers classes geared towards becoming a travel/tourism specialist. http://www.citytowninfo.com/school-profiles/penn-foster-career-school

Aside from educational requirements, travel agents also have to be courteous, professional, detail oriented, organized and accurate. Because travel agents work on computers a lot to do research for their clients and book their travel arrangements, they need some knowledge of computers and the Internet. If you aren't knowledgeable about these, vocational school might help.

LICENSING: There is no special license or certificate to sell travel. It's not like real estate or insurance where there is a special state administered test that you have to pass. Some states do however do have formal requirements where they require you to join a travel seller's registration program. Florida is one of these states. Once you register, which normally will cost you a yearly fee, you will be recognized as a legitimate entity by suppliers.

SCAMS: When you start looking for a job as a travel agent you might come across some of the many travel agent scams out there. These companies are only out to take your money. They glamorize the profession by saying you will get to travel all over the world and make a lot of money at the same time. They say you can work whenever you want and make your own schedule right from home. Often you can recognize these scams because they only focus on the fun sides of the travel agent's job. They require that you pay a large sum of money up front so you can get access to your own web portal to sell travel from. Some companies even issue fake travel ID cards claiming you will get all sorts of travel discounts. Be careful because even though there are legitimate host companies out there that advertise this way, some of them could be scams. If a company requires you to recruit affiliates for them you are dealing with a multi level marketing company. This has nothing to do with becoming a travel agent. Make sure to do research on any company that you are thinking about committing to. http://www.homebasedtravelagent.com/scams.htm

DUTIES: When you aspire to become a Miami travel agent of course you want to know what is expected of you. You want to know what kind of duties and tasks will you have to do on a daily basis. Knowing what the job duties are also makes it so you can see if you need more training in certain areas. Following is a summary of what duties and tasks you can expect to perform as a travel agent:

• ■ You will have to assist, communicate with, and inform customers about their desired travel destinations. A travel agent should be able to inform them about air fares, accommodations, rental cars, climate/weather, points of interest, required vaccinations, travel documents and customs regulations.
• ■ You will have to book hotel reservations and transportation either by using their telephone or terminal.
• ■ When working for a tour operator your duties might include promoting, developing, arranging and selling the company's own travel services and package tours through direct mail, the Internet and presentations.
• ■ Travel agents provide brochures and publications to the customer about their chosen destination.
• ■ Researching publications and online sources for information on flights, fares, group discounts and quality of hotel accommodations is another task at hand.
• ■ You have to be able to calculate costs of the fares, hotel stay, transportation and you should be able to quote various travel package prices.
• ■ Travel agents also print tickets and answering the customer's questions.