Micky Dixon is a self-professed military brat; travel is in her blood.
"I was often called by friends for travel recommendations since I had been there," said Dixon.
"I sometimes took friends along to Europe with me on vacation and just loved seeing their reactions when I introduced them to new things: sights, history, food, culture. After each of these trips, my fellow travelers told me that I should become a tour guide or travel agent."
In 2011, she and her husband were laid off.
"All of a sudden, I had the time to consider what I wanted to do, and I decided it was time to put my experience with, and passion for, travel to good use," she said. "After all, as the saying goes, 'if you do something you love, then you never work a day in your life.' That has certainly proved true for me."
Her company, Travel Planning For You, celebrated its sixth anniversary in March. "I am having the time of my life," she said.
She started her own business the same way that many agents do, first working as an independent contractor with a local brick-and-mortar agency. Once she felt that she was ready, she ventured out on her own.
To start her business, she met with a local chapter director of CCRA and another from The National Association of Career Travel Agents.
"I registered my company name with the state, set up my business checking account, purchased E&O insurance for my company, created a website and Facebook page and obtained my industry ID, setting my career as an independent agency owner into motion," said Dixon, owner of Travel Planning for You.
She since obtained her ACC and the CTA and is currently working on getting her CTC.
"I know that by educating myself I will serve my clients better," she said.
After living in Germany and traveling all over Europe for 20-plus years, it seemed like a no-brainer for Dixon to specialize in customized European independent travel itineraries and river cruising.
"I have plenty of experience with independent travel, but I came to river cruising begrudgingly," she said. "I knew how to get around Europe. Why would anyone want to sail from dock-to-dock when they could go by train? I fell in love with the whole experience on my first river cruise. I have several more sailings under my belt now and have made lifelong friends on each one."
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Now that she's been in the business for some time, she thinks the biggest issue facing travel agents is client education.
"Travel agents need to be educating travelers about the value and services we provide," she said.
"Especially to clear up the misconceptions that are out there, such as who pays the commission; why booking through an OTA can result in clients being walked from hotels; how there is virtually no customer service from an OTA should something go wrong during their trip; how the airlines are telling travelers to take up rescheduling or being bumped with the OTA when they do not book direct; how when we book for them it is considered booking direct; when and why they need travel protection; the difference between trip cancellation and travel protection policies, etc."
Her advice to other wanna-be travel agents?
"If it is your passion, go for it," she said. "Get educated on everything travel related; find a host agency willing to train you; join a travel association or two, where you can network with other agents and meet suppliers one-on-one; go to travel trade conferences."
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She said that you can't be all things to everyone, so decide on a niche market or destination to specialize in, then travel to the destinations you want to focus on.
"Become an expert in that market or destination and your clients will appreciate you all the more," she said. "Being a travel agent is hard work, but if you love it, it can be very rewarding for both you and your clients."
She has a lot of favorite stories, but one client is especially memorable.
"I had a client who, as a 12-year-old child, left Germany during the war, coming to live with family in the U.S.," she said. "He arrived with just one small bag of possessions, which included a tattered photo album with pictures from his childhood: a few of himself as a young boy; a few of his parents; one of his family home with shrapnel in the exterior wall; three from a special family vacation to Bavaria; etc."
He sought out Dixon's services to help him and his wife plan a homecoming trip. It was to be his first time to back to Germany in over 60 years.
"He wanted to go to his hometown of Cologne, Germany to see if his house was still there and, hopefully, find his father's gravesite," said Dixon. "He wanted to go to the places he remembered from family vacations and school trips."
Together, Dixon discovered that his cousins had survived the war and were still in Cologne.
"I'm fluent in German, so I was able to help him send a letter to let them know that he was coming over," she said. "I booked them on a river cruise from Basel to Amsterdam as a way to ease him into being home in Germany."
She selected the itinerary because it had a one-day stop in Cologne and she wanted him to be able to experience the city as part of a group, before he met his family, knowing it would be an emotional day.
"After the cruise, he and his wife spent a week with his cousins and their now-extended family in Cologne," she said. "He went to his old family home, where the hole in the exterior had been repaired and the house had been expanded into a duplex. The tree he helped his father plant is now over 20 feet tall, offering lots of shade in the garden. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate his father's grave."
From Cologne, he traveled to a small town where the records at the local church helped him find the graves of other family members and enabled him to trace his ancestry even further back.
"Next, they were off to Munich and Berchtesgaden and the vacation spots of his childhood," she said. "He carried that tattered photo album with him, sharing it with strangers, who sat and chatted with him about their experiences or their memories, and he even ran across someone who had known one of his relatives from before the war-priceless childhood memories relived and shared with his wife while making new memories and taking new pictures to add to that photo album."
When Dixon wants to travel, she loves to visit Budapest, Istanbul and Brussels, but her favorite place is, of course, Germany: "After living in Germany for over 20 years and having relatives and friends there still, visiting Germany is like going home."
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