Tours provide post-cut profits: agents expand partnerships with tour operators, and tap incentives, group travel and consolidated air. (Tours & Packages).

Travel Agent, May, 2002 by Schiller, Kristan

While agents have been creatively expanding their partnerships with tour operators and honing their niche-marketing and group-selling skills for years, even those who depended heavily on airline commissions can boost their profits by selling tours.

"The dynamics between tour operators and travel agents are different than those between airlines and agents," says National Tour Association President Hank Phillips. "For example, direct bookings on the Internet may compete with agents booking tours, but in no way at all does it play as great a factor as it does with people booking air. Therefore, there is a much more traditional role for the travel agent in booking a tour than there is with respect to air."

Phillips says that the best way for agents to...