Travel agents help their clients make travel plans. In addition to booking reservations, they assist customers in choosing their destination, transportation, and lodging and inform travellers of passport and visa requirements, rates of currency exchange, and import duties.
Wholesale travel agents specialise in organizing tours and then selling them to retail travel agencies who in turn, sell on to travellers. Many tours also include optional side trips and activities that have to be planned carefully. Wholesale travel agents must have good marketing skills to interest retail travel agents in the tours they have developed.
Retail travel agents offer advice to the general public. They provide travellers with timetables and travel literature, compute fare costs and make reservations, and sell tours developed by the wholesale travel organisations. In large travel agencies, agents may specialise in specific geographic areas; in smaller agencies, travel agents have a broader range of responsibilities.