Become a Travel Agent

Home Based Travel Agents
Are you Buried in Paper?

By Joanie Ogg CTC MCC
In our wonderful world of automation and technology, it seems so our friend the computer has replaced many of the daily tasks. Certainly this has made us incredibly more efficient in our filing systems and in our use of office space. With email being the most widely used form of communication for travel professionals it seems we don’t have much need for the old paper filing system and we have done away with a great deal of clutter, right?

Well then why is it that I never seem to see the lovely oak of my desk and office shelves? Is it just me or do others of you find that we still have a great need to stay organized manually as well? What If the system goes down and we cannot access a copy of an email or worse yet an itinerary? I cannot tell you how many members email me on a weekly basis to ask for their member numbers and passwords for the member’s site because their computer crashed. It is a sad but a common occurrence today with the viruses thriving on our productivity!

I find it necessary in my office to make copies of so many emails and important documents as I am sure you all do as well. Well, in my search for getting organized this year (one of my New Year’s Resolutions) I did a fair amount of reading about organization and would like to share it with you here. Thanks to some of these tasks, I can now see the wood on the desk! Hope it helps you too!

Trade Magazine and Important Industry Publications (like Home Based Trade)

Take a moment to review the table of contents to see if an article is of interest to you and really relative to your business. Take the time to tear out those article or the main sections you need and toss the rest. Of course you probably want to keep the entire issue of Travel Trade and Home Based Trade…

Then create a file for those articles and be sure to categorize them according to topics so you can easily reference them later. Good idea to date the article too so can make sure the information is current when you use it. If I don’t have time to read the issue then I toss it in a basket I keep and weekly if I can I sort through it and try to do the above. Then I simply toss the rest and it seems to be working so far.

Business Cards and More Business Cards…

Try to set aside some time after you attend and event or conference to enter the important contacts into your database. I do this on my flight home from events as it helps me to remember conversations and I can make notes in their records that I create. I might decide to keep a few and I file those in a card file but most of them I toss after I have them in the database.

Do You Still Need A Manual Filing System?

I know I do. If you are like me and feel the need to still save a fair amount of paper, here are some suggestions that are working well for me.

First I am an Office Depot junkie and I love to use the colored file folders so I try to create a system based on the colors. Examples would be all our NACTA Supplier Members are coded by color. Cruise lines are blue, Car Rental Firms are Red, Tour Operators are Blue, etc. It makes it easier for me to locate what I need more readily.

Then I alphabetize all files in a given category, which again makes it pretty simple to find. I am into simple…

The Mail Dilemma

This is a tough one for me as I travel pretty frequently and have to organize after a great deal of it is stacked up waiting for me. Tom and Andy are kind and put it in smaller stacks on my desk when I am gone.

I try to sort the mail using a desktop file and I divide it into the following categories but all of you would of course have your own categories based on your personal needs. Here are the ones I use right now. Write, Read, Call, Pay and my favorite one No Clue.

The Mobile Office Assistant

A number of members have shared this technique with me and I think it is brilliant. They not only have their laptop with them but they also have portable file box that they simply organize when going to meet clients and take with them. They put in the needed brochures, videos and any other related information they can share with the clients to help close the sale. I have to believe the clients are very impressed with their planning and preparation they have taken the time to do.

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