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(Travel Agent, Reservations Agent, Travel Sales Consultant, Corporate Travel Consultant)
Hospitality & Tourism
Salary
€26,000 - €52,000/yr
Level
Operational
Outlook
Stable
Sector
Hospitality & Tourism
As a Travel Consultant you design, plan, and book travel arrangements for individuals, families, and corporate clients, covering flights, accommodation, car hire, insurance, and package tours. You advise customers on destinations, visa requirements, health precautions, and travel documentation, drawing on up-to-date knowledge of worldwide travel products. Day-to-day you use global distribution systems (GDS) such as Galileo or Amadeus to process reservations and issue tickets, while ensuring all bookings are accurately recorded. You work closely with airlines, hotel chains, tour operators, and ground-handling agents, and you may specialise in leisure travel, corporate travel management, or cruise and specialist holidays.
Listen: a day as a Travel Consultant
You arrive at the travel agency in Cork city centre just before nine o'clock, hang up your coat, and log in to the Amadeus global distribution system. Before the phones get busy, you check overnight emails from tour operators and scan a batch of airline schedule changes that arrived from Ryanair and Aer Lingus. One flight time has shifted by nearly two hours, so you need to contact the affected clients before they find out themselves. By half nine the first customer of the day is sitting across the desk from you — a family of four planning two weeks in Portugal in July. You ask about their budget, which airports suit them, and whether they prefer a self-catering apartment or a hotel with meals included. You pull up options in Amadeus, cross-reference availability on the Sunway and TUI Ireland trade portals, and price three different combinations. It takes longer than expected because one child is travelling on an Irish passport that expires in five months, so you flag the Portuguese entry rules and advise them to renew immediately.
Most Travel Consultants in Ireland enter through a QQI Level 6 Advanced Certificate in Travel and Tourism, available as a PLC course in Colleges of Further Education across the country. Leaving Certificate subjects such as Geography, Business, Modern Languages, and English are particularly useful for this career. Some entrants complete a QQI Level 5 Certificate in Travel and Tourism as a starting point before progressing to Level 6. A relevant NFQ Level 7 or Level 8 degree in Tourism Management or Business with Tourism, offered at institutions such as TU Dublin, ATU, or MTU, can broaden career opportunities and support progression into management. Completing IATA (International Air Transport Association) training and gaining certification in a GDS platform such as Amadeus are industry-recognised credentials that many Irish employers expect. No statutory registration body governs this occupation, but membership of professional bodies such as ITAA (Irish Travel Agents Association) is common among established practitioners.
Most Travel Consultants begin their careers in a retail travel agency or a corporate travel management company in an entry-level reservations or sales role, typically after completing a QQI Level 5 or Level 6 qualification. With a few years of experience and strong sales performance, you can progress to a Senior Consultant or Team Leader position, taking on responsibility for complex itineraries, key accounts, or junior staff supervision. Further advancement can lead to roles such as Branch Manager, Corporate Travel Manager, or Product and Contracting Executive with a tour operator. Some experienced consultants move into related areas such as airline sales, hotel contracting, tourism marketing, or set up their own independent travel agency.
AI-powered booking platforms and chatbots now handle straightforward flight and hotel searches, reducing the demand for basic transactional reservations work. However, this has shifted the Travel Consultant's role towards higher-value, complex itinerary planning and specialist advice that automated tools cannot easily replicate. AI tools assist consultants by analysing fare trends, generating personalised destination recommendations, and streamlining administrative tasks such as producing itineraries and maintaining client records. Consultants who embrace these tools and focus on relationship-driven, specialist service are well positioned to remain relevant as the industry evolves.
→ Travel Consultant (Current role)
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