I have been employed in the travel industry for almost 3 years. Although I didn’t have any previous travel experience at the time I was hired I was given a position on the agents support team and learned about the aspects of travel authorizations, profiles, working queues, schedule changes and ticketing. Later, still with relatively little experience I was given the opportunity to serve our clients as Client Service Representative and point of contact for our government accounts. This position has allowed me to increase my knowledge of aspects of the travel industry in areas such as the new account set up and implementation, quality control procedures, premium class travel, debit memo’s, government travel contracts, and account credit card reconciliation.
I am employed with a reputable and rapidly growing Travel Management Center (TMC) which is accredited by ARC and has been in operation for 30 years. It has been exciting to be involved in such a diverse and fast paced environment which brings new and unique challenges each day.
Our clients include family vacationers, small and locally owned businesses and large corporations and government agencies. It truly requires special knowledge and understanding of a TMC’s leaders to constantly and properly balance the vastly different needs of clients in such a changing world of travel.
Our TMC utilizes the best technology available to the industry and employs some of the most experienced travel agents that can be found. Our strong reputation is a result of our high customer service ratings, close communications with employees and dedicated leaders of integrity.
My job responsibilities consist of being of assistance to the account managers in the government department so that they may focus more on managing employees to ensure customer satisfaction. I am also responsible for resolving debit memos for our department which allows me to work closely with the accounting department. Although receiving debit memo’s is certainly not a pleasant issue for anyone involved I have learned that monitoring memo’s daily and constantly working to resolve those that are outstanding is highly advantageous. Also, properly reporting the status, reasons for issuance and finding ways to prevent debit memo’s results in better TMC and airline relations. The one thing that I most dislike about working with debit memos is the reality of agent errors for my agent co-workers. Although agent errors many times result in the amount of the memo being paid by the agent I am always and continually hopeful that the errors will ultimately result in raising awareness of rules and regulations imposed by the airlines and prevent costly errors while also improving reservation accuracy.
I am thankful for my employer. Not only are we good at what we do we also stay largely involved in community activities such as fund raisers to help local schools, Christmas charities, heart walks, and just helping the needy in our community in general. This TMC is one that I am really proud to be a part of.
By Michelle Kennard