Traveling anywhere much beyond one’s home county or zip code can rapidly become a complex task with a dozen-and-a-half moving parts, even more so if the plan is to travel internationally. That’s why travelers around the world often turn to travel agencies for assistance booking flights and hotels, planning trip itineraries, and getting support with the ticketing and visa processes. As a result, the travel industry is flush with agencies eager to help customers in need—but such prevalence comes at a cost, with many agencies suffering from overly complex systems and agents on the verge of burnout due to lack of support.
BWJ Travel, a host travel agency born from a family’s love for traveling and facilitating travel for others, tackles those challenges by striving to create an agency that trades complexity for simplicity and burnout for success. Founded by brothers Edwin and Jacob Sarkisyan, the inheritors and builders of nationally-recognized SVH Travel, BWJ Travel is designed to empower a network of passionate travel consultants across the country, with the goal of sharing the founders’ blueprint for travel agency success with young agents seeking to create careers out of making once-in-a-lifetime experiences possible for others. With a diverse and growing team of eager consultants, all united by their love for travel and passion for bringing people together, BWJ Travel is well on its way to making that dream a reality.
BWJ Travel is unique in its proactive care and support for the travel agents under its umbrella, ensuring that customers get the best possible experience by giving the team all of the ingredients for success. A range of policies, technical support services, and company-backed opportunities are available to ensure that agents are well-supported and empowered to do their job. On the customer-facing side, BWJ Travel keeps things streamlined and simple wherever possible, to make travel exciting and painless.
“Maintaining trust and credibility in a competitive industry simply comes down to relationships, which we have always prioritized,” explains Co-Founder, Edwin Sarkisian. “We maintain trust with our agents by providing as much hands-on support as we possibly can, especially through our live trainings conducted by our co-founders themselves. Our credibility comes from the years of experience that we have in this industry, and the relationships that we have built with clients, agents, and suppliers in that time.”
Varied Options For Leisure Travelers
BWJ Travel has developed a number of partnerships and built systems to enable travel for any kind of client. Their agents are trained to offer all types of travel services, including accommodations, flights, cruises, car rentals, airport transfers, tours, and more. From accommodations ranging from hotels and motels to vacation rental properties like cabins and cottages (available through Expedia TAAP’s partnership with VRBO), and both domestic and international flights of all fare types through various suppliers, BWJ Travel can confidently provide clients with everything they need to ensure a smooth and pleasant travel experience. Once on the ground, car rentals and other transportation services are also available.
While BWJ Travel often provides leisure travel clients—people looking for experiences like a cruise vacation or all-inclusive resort trip with their friends, family, and/or significant others—to their agents, all agents are free to service clients in their own niches.
“Some of our agents could be servicing solo travelers who are looking to explore the historic sites of Europe while some of our other agents could be servicing couples who are looking for romantic getaways,” founder, Jacob Sark explains.
BWJ Travel has long-standing partnerships with a number of major travel suppliers, including but not limited to Royal Caribbean, ALG Vacations, and Apple Vacations, which allows them to provide unique and valuable travel options to clients. Additionally, they have a long-standing partnership with Expedia TAAP, with whom they hold platinum status. The company’s streamlined client process, dedicated support, and value-driven partnerships led to them being awarded the Award of Excellence at the ALG Diamond Elite event in Punta Cana.
Standout Agent Support
BWJ Travel differentiates itself from others in the industry in large part by the amount of support it provides to not just customers, but its agents and staff. Through a combination of cutting-edge technology investments and dedicated support staff, both agents and customers can be assured that their travel (or travel agent) experience will be smooth and effective. BWJ Travel reviews speak highly of their support and care for new agents especially.
The largest differentiation between BWJ Travel and other agencies comes in with their agent support, and that starts with baseline expectations. Most agents working for host travel agencies can expect commission rates nearing, and occasionally reaching, 50%, with many falling into other arrangements that could be less favorable. These agents also have to hunt down their own clients, or wait for clients to approach them, making the flow of work inconsistent. BWJ Travel is unique among host travel agencies in that they directly provide clients to travel agents through their easy-to-use Travel Agent Portal, and have a set 80/20 split on commission earnings—that means agents receive 80% of their earned commission, with 20% going to the company itself.
Upon getting signed up to BWJ Travel, our new agents undergo a travel certification program, which involves a robust lesson plan that thoroughly explains not only how to navigate specifically the BWJ Travel resources but also the general practice of booking travel for clients.”
In alignment with their broad mission and goals, BWJ Travel prioritizes providing hands-on support to their agents on a more functional level. Their Agent Portal contains a number of services and tools for agents’ use, including a trained AI chatbot that can answer basic questions; a profession support team available for more complex assistance via text, call, and email; a booking advisor who provides them with one-on-one support as they make bookings for clients; and more. Whether agents are new to the industry or seasoned experts, they’ll have access to BWJ Travel’s live webinars (conducted by representatives from trusted travel suppliers), biweekly live interactive podcasts discussing trends and tips, and live booking and support calls twice weekly, featuring live walkthroughs and scenario role-plays of travel bookings by Jacob Sarkisyan.
“Our incredibly robust Agent Portal has multiple tools integrated directly into it for our agents, including a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, Sherpa, and CC (Credit Card) Authorization Form, Edwin Sarkisian explains. “We maintain trust with our agents by providing as much hands-on support as we possibly can, especially through our live trainings conducted by our co-founders themselves.”
