Several people are seeking careers that can provide them with the luxury of job satisfaction, career advancement and the opportunity for travel and adventures. The attraction of the travel industry for this lot is therefore a no brainer.

We think you should know this first before reading further: If you think the travel industry is where you run to when all attempts to get a ‘White Collar’ job has failed, then you are in for a big shock.

A lot of ignorant people think the job of a reservation agent is not professional enough and they could easily jump in and secure a job. Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is not so.

All over the world, there are reservation agents and there are RESERVATION agents - if you know what we mean :-)

So where do I start from? A familiar question we keep getting from our teeming followers on all our social media platforms most especially on Twitter and Facebook is "where do I begin?....."

Now back to why we are here. There is no template anywhere in Nigeria that teaches you how to become a professional reservation agent and how to secure a good job afterwards, but our experience in this industry has been able to able to teach us enough.

Let us begin by listing the following points. We will then proceed to treat them one after the other:

• A university degree (important but not compulsory)

• Basic training as a ticket & reservation officer (compulsory)

• Familiarity with popular booking platforms (compulsory)

• IATA training and certification (important but not compulsory)

Now that we have listed the basic requirements needed, we will take time to explain each step below:


A University degree

We are sure you must have hard that you don’t need a University degree to become a reservation agent, or that the type of degree obtained is not even relevant. To an extent, this is true.

However, experience has taught us that a good university degree would not only help your personal development and exposure in the industry, but is also most likely to get you a good job very fast.

If you however don’t have a degree yet or you are running a part-time programme somewhere, you are not left out. The job is OPEN to everyone irrespective of your educational background and gender.


Basic training as a ticket & reservation officer

This is one of the most important steps in becoming a reservation officer. This training equips you with all the basic knowledge and understanding you will need to build your career.

There are several training schools spread across Nigeria that offer trainings to people, but you need to be careful before deciding on any of them.

One of the key things to look out for before choosing is to make conduct research about the training school. Find out whether they are registered as a company in Nigeria and how long they have been in existence (though this might not that important but for the sake of integrity, it might help).

Don’t just Google up the school over the internet and put a call across to the contact number you picked up off a website – instead, you might wanna pay a visit to their office before making any financial commitment.

When you eventually pay a visit, try to interact with the present students of the school to find out if they actually deliver on the promises listed on their website; a word of caution - most of them don’t!

The cost of getting basic training in ticketing and reservation in these schools vary but usually hovers between N50, 000 and N120, 000 for a two weeks training. This depends on the training school, the facilities available to every student and whether it includes complimentary breakfast and lunch.

Is it possible to do a personal study without having to go to a formal training school? Yes it is, but if you have to consider what you get by interacting with other students and the fact that you can get any answer to any question you have on the spot, we would always recommend you pay for formal training.

Okay guys, we will stop here for now! The concluding part of the post will be updated next week.