My JOB......: Have you been to a Travel Fair before.....Its a madhouse....

Every half yearly, the Travel Trade in my country will hold a Travel Fair, normally located in somewhere in town so as to provide easy access to all visitors whom would like to book their holidays in advance will normally come and see what are the best deals and bargains there will be set for the consumers. But way before the fair starts, we Travel Agents will have to slave out in order to produce the best deals in town, thus also remembering that we are in direct competition with our competitors down at the Trade Fair where numerous Travel Agents will be displaying their skills and best deals to lure that customer into their turf.

Like i've mentioned earlier, our typical day before the commencement of the Travel Fair will be preparing to submission of our deals to the Ads Agency for them to be compiling for our newspaper advertising and our pricelist normally distributed during the Fair. But way before any submission can be done, we will normally try to get our overseas agents to quote the best deal, promotions for the fair, discuss on what will be the trend for this years market and etc..After these are sorted out, we then begin to submit our deals to the Ads Agency for them to come up with the basic format/layout of our pricelist. After several vettings, the pricelist will be finally ready to meet its future owner=consumers. Now arm with the pricelist, consumers then can browse thru' what is this years market trend to places they wish to go and hop on down with their whole family like a family outing down to the Fair to look for the best deals in town.

Some observations which i had since i'm blogging will be the ugliness of consumers down at the fair. Once, i was serving a couple and already a queue was formed without my noticing it. The people behind that queue will roll their eyes and keep track of the time you've spent on this particular customer in order to determine whether you are efficient or not...Who cares....they will have to wait in line for their turn. Normally, banks will also play a part in these Travel Fairs in order to reel in potential customer base into their turf as well. Any purchases from the selected Travel Agents will entitle you to a Travel Trolley, mini fridges, mini hi-fi sets, Cooking appliances etc...to entice that consumer to spend using their credit cards. Without mentioning, the credit card companies will without any questions extend your credit limits for that dream travel you've planned or a honeymoon vacation. Once, i've heard of this scam, where this particular consumer books a long haul vacation and paid a dear amount for this package. Knowing that this tour will never form as the travel agents needs at least a number of passengers before forming the required group size. Hence, the travel agent will have to refund the amount of money the consumer paid, however the catch is any purchase that the consumer has paid thru' his/her credit card, they get to retain those gifts without ever needing to return that gift although the group was not formed. And so knowing of this flaw in the system, consumers are armed and they know which are the unlikely travel packages that will not form and take a risk/gamble and finally gets away with those gifts the banks have set aside for.

I must salute those consumers whom are able to brave the crowds and queues and at the end of the day get what they've schemed after...