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A travel agency is a business that sell goods and services that are related to travelling on behalf of the suppliers such as railways, package holidays, sight seeing tours, airlines, cruise lines, car rentals, hotels etc. They also make travel arrangements for travelers in the business category. Some agencies act as general sales agents especially for foreign travel companies .Travel agencies do not operate like mainstream retail outlets since they do not keep any stock in hand. Once a customer orders a ticket or holiday package, the agent then orders the same from the supplier who sells sit to the agent at a discount. The difference between what the agent pays to the supplier and what the customer pays them is their commission. A commission of 10-14% is considered fair. Where no commissions are paid (as is usually the case for airlines in the country) the travel agent charges a service fee which is added to the net price. The types of agencies found in the US areindependent agencies, mega agencies, consortiums and regional agencies. It is now possible for customers to book a hotel or buy an airline ticket directly online without having to go through a travel agent. A popular online travel agency is Expedia. The availability of online booking for many customers has resulted in travel agents being disintermediated. Due to this fact, jobs for travel agencies have decreased. However, travel agents are still widely used for cruise vacations where they record about 76% of all bookings and about 72% of bookings in packaged travel. Home based travel agencies are also more successful due to their lower overheads. Travel agencies have also re-invented themselves as travel consultants where they act as concierges with specialized knowledge in such areas as cultural tourism and nautical tourism. Despite the economic meltdown witnessed a few years ago, the travel agency franchises in the country seem to be getting along fine. As many as 85% of the country’s travel agency franchises returned a profit for the period ending 2010.Buying a travel agency franchise has some unique benefits such as : the brand name of an established franchise offers instant recognition and acceptance among customers, the business model of the franchise is well established, the parent company offers training and frees the new company of the need to carry out extensive market research etc .A few of the country’s well known franchises are Uniglobe Travel USA franchise, Cruise One Franchise, Cruise Planners Franchise, Enchanted Honeymoons Franchise etc.