International Travel Consultant

The work involves planning and booking international travel — complex itineraries involving multiple countries, airlines and alliances, visa requirements, time zone changes, and the specific logistical challenges of long-haul travel. A client might need a 3-week trip through Southeast Asia with business class positioning flights, mixed accommodation types, and built-in flexibility for extension. You're building that itinerary, pricing it, sourcing components the client couldn't replicate on their own, and managing everything that happens before and during the trip.

The knowledge requirement is the key differentiator. Clients use a travel consultant because you know things they can't easily find — which airlines have the best J-class products on a specific route, which hotels have been renovated recently versus running on pre-COVID standards, which tour operators actually deliver the experience they promise. That knowledge comes from supplier relationships, FAM trips, and years of working specific destinations.

The business development side is ongoing: building a client portfolio, asking for referrals, maintaining relationships with clients between trips. The best international travel consultants have clients who come back trip after trip and refer friends — that loyalty is built on trust, and trust comes from delivering something the client couldn't replicate on their own.