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Since You Asked: Answers to Independent Contractors' Questions
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- How do I sign up with World Travel Management?
- First, read over these questions and answers.
Second, request access to the agent-only section of our web
site from the last answer in this list.
Third, give us a call on our toll-free number, 1-866-257-8273,
and tell us you want to sign up.
Fourth, Sign and return (by mail or fax) the contract and signup
forms that we send to you.
We generally have new agents set up for
online booking within one or two work days. Amadeus may take a bit
longer if we need to wait for Amadeus to send us new
authorization codes, but we try to keep a spare on hand.
- How much does it cost to join World Travel Management?
- In short, $125 for the signup fee and first monthly fee.
For 2011, there is a signup fee of $100. This includes: listing on our
web site, a worldtravelmgt.com email address, individual registrations
as WTM agents in several booking engines, Amadeus setup help,
and renewal of your IATAN card (with qualifying earnings). It also
helps pay for a background check. The 2011 renewal fee for agents
renewing their contracts is $50.
There is a monthly access fee of $25
payable at the beginning of each month which includes access to
Amadeus, our agent-only web site, diverse online booking engines,
invoicing, accounting, and travel document delivery for the month.
If your commission check is at least $50 in any month, we will
waive $5 of your monthly access fee for the following month for each $50 we pay you, up to the full amount of your fee. This is our way of providing an extra reward to steady producers.
- Why do I need Professional Liability and Errors and Omissions Insurance?
- Professional Liability and E&O insurance protects you
against a myriad of possible problems. There are many stories of
agents being sued by disgruntled clients or injured travelers.
- Is my spouse or partner covered by my contract?
- Not automatically. Your spouse or partner has three options:
a) sign a separate contract just like yours, with the same
costs and benefits. b) sign a sub-agent contract (see next section),
or c) your spouse or partner (one only please! :-) ) can be included
on your contract at no extra cost, if your spouse or partner
signs the contract along with you and you designate to us which
spouse/partner should get the commission checks and the
1099 form. Note that your choice of option may influence
your ability to qualify for errors and omissions insurance as an
independent contractor.
- Is my employee covered by my contract?
- Yes, and No. Our contract stipulates that you may hire
whatever assistants you want, but such assistants do not automatically
become WTM Independent Contractors. We *do* offer a "sub-agent"
contract which makes your employee an independent contractor with WTM
and which splits the commissions between the sub-agent (employee) and the
primary contractor (employeer), with each getting a 1099 at the end
of the year. Such a sub-agent will be on our IATAN list and eligible for
an IATAN card with qualifying earnings. We charge the primary
contractor the standard signup or annual renewal fee for each sub-agent,
but there is no additional monthly fee for a sub-agent as long as
the primary contractor maintains his/her contract with us. An
employeer may opt for an additional simultaneous GDS connection @
$15/mo for the employee.
- What is the term of the WTM contract?
- Your contract with WTM will run from Jan 1 or the signing date,
whichever is later, through Dec 31.
- Can I charge service fees? How are they handled?
- Yes. World Travel Management encourages its Independent
Contractors to charge fees for their work. Fees can be bundled
into the tour cost or listed separately, and are treated as commissions.
If you want us to charge a fee through our merchant account there
will be a 3% merchant services fee to cover our costs.
- Does World Travel Management have fees?
- Yes. Although we have eliminated most of our
fees, a few remain:
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Overnight Delivery | At Agent Expense
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Overnight Saturday Delivery | At Agent Expense
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Merchant Services | 3% of amount charged
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- With Amadeus Selling Platform you have an efficient way to book your
clients' travel 24-hours a day. However,
all our agents get access to Amadeus Cruise and Amadeus Tour through
Vacation.com whether or not they use Amadeus Selling Platform.
- Is there a setup fee for Amadeus Selling Platform?
- No. We try to keep fees as simple and as low as possible.
That way we spend more time accounting for your commissions and
less time accounting for our fees. In other words, we want you to
understand that we make money only when you make money, and that
we do our best to help you succeed because that helps us succeed
too.
- What if I have a problem with Amadeus Selling Platform?
- WTM provides support for the software installation and limited
trouble-shooting. For advanced or after-hours help,
Amadeus has a support desk available 24 hours a day.
They also have a web site with an online help desk and a
comprehensive online manual as well as extensive online training
at Amadeus University.
- Are there other ways to book reservations?
- Yes.
We provide access to vacation.com EZAir, EZTour and EZCruise, plus we have
a direct agent link to FareBuzz, and we have links to a great many online supplier booking engines. You also can make a reservation by phone. We provide an online invoice request form to document reservations made outside of Amadeus Selling Platform.
- What do I do if I have a problem or questions?
- We have several resources to help you with your problems or questions.
- Call us toll-free at 1-866-257-8273, or
- Check the Frequently Answered Questions list (the FAQ).
- Check the agent-only section of our web site. This contains many
useful resources.
- Check the WTMbb bulletin board or WTMchat mailing list archive
to see if someone has answered your question already.
- If not, post your problem or question to the agent bulletin
board or mailing list. With the depth of experience represented
in the WTM IC group, someone will almost certainly have a good answer.
- How soon can I have travel benefits?
- First of all, as Joanie Ogg, former president of NACTA (the National
Association of Commissioned Travel Agents) said, most travel benefits
have gone the way of the Dodo bird. That said, there are still
plenty of benefits for committed sellers of travel. Suppliers are
always willing to reward productive agents. Also, there are many
excellent training programs that include travel. As an accredited
agency, we abide by the IATAN rules for their card membership which
is still the industry standard. If your WTM commissions meet the
IATAN qualification, we will pay for your new card or renewal to
celebrate. We want to help you reach that goal. After all, the
more you sell, the more we all make.
- Must all my bookings be made through World Travel Management?
- As an independent contractor, you cannot be forced to put all
your bookings through one host agency. However, we like to think that
you will book as much as possible with us for the support, help, and
other benefits we provide. The host agency - independent contractor
relationship involves a lot of trust. This is a difficult business
and everyone needs some help at some point. Isn't it nice to know
someone will support you because you have supported them?
- Why do you encourage agents to submit commission logs?
- The commission log process is really designed for reducing
errors in commission tracking and payments. When you submit your
commission log, we check to be sure the invoice numbers are correct
(and correct any errors we can identify). We then pay all the
commissions that have come in to your account, whether or not you
have claimed them, adding more lines to your log as needed.
If you have submitted invoice numbers for which commissions have
not yet been received, we mark them as "carry-over". You do not
need to resubmit any "carry-over" invoices, only the new invoices
you have generated since your last log.
We also have an automatic "auto-pay" policy for all agents whose
accumulated earnings reach $100, where we simply fill in the log,
and pay you, possibly before we have received your submitted log,
unless you have specifically instructed us to "let it ride" to a
higher commission target. (Your options each month
are "pay any amount", or "let it ride" to $100 [default], or to $250.)
If you do submit a log after
we have already sent out an "auto-pay" log, we will merge your
submission into that log for the subsequent payment period.
You have the option of submitting no logs at all and relying entirely
on "auto-pay", a plan which is comparable to the commission payment
plans of some other host agencies, but such "auto-pay only" logs
do not show unpaid invoices, which is a disadvantage if you want
to prod a supplier who is slow to pay.
A majority of our agents seem to prefer the "auto-pay" option.
- Why do you list your Affiliates and/or Independent Contractors
on your web site?
- First, if you don't want to be listed, let us know and we won't
put your contact information on our site. Most of our agents prefer
being listed because new prospects occasionally find them this way,
and for those who have web sites, the extra links help improve their
placement in search engines.
We like to list our agents and affiliates because we are confident
that if you contact any of them while considering joining us you
will hear how we treat them, and you'll like what you hear. Perhaps
you should ask the other host agencies you are considering why they
don't list their Independent Contractors and affiliates.
:-)
- May I see the agent-only section of your web site?
- Yes. Just fill out our Guest Access
Request form, agreeing to keep the information confidential,
and we'll be in touch soon with a temporary login for you.
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