You don't need a host agency to hand you an IATA accreditation number and wish you luck. That's what most of them do anyway.
We've spent years on every side of this industry: as a hosted agency, as independent contractors, as business owners, hotel consultants, hotel recruiters, and sales and marketing trainers. Here's what we learned, and why we built RDB Hospitality Group differently.
The industry's dirty secret
Support in the host agency space is too low. Independent contractors should absolutely run their own businesses, but running your own business shouldn't mean running it alone.
Too many host agencies hand you three things: an accreditation, a training, and a booking system. Then they disappear. They bank on the accreditation being the hook. The unspoken message is "you can't do this job without us." That's not support. That's a toll booth.
You're not just a travel professional. You're a business owner.
Travel advisors need help becoming better connected professionals, sure. But they also need help becoming better business people, and nowhere is that more true than client acquisition.
There is no bigger opportunity in any industry than travel. Yet most new and existing agents were never taught how to actually acquire clients. Sales and marketing get skipped entirely. The larger host agencies are built for agents who don't want too many clients. Read that again. That's not us. A host agency that helps you win clients will beat every larger, fancier, legacy competitor, and we're investing in your business as a whole to do exactly that.
The training problem compounds this. At big host agencies, training is limited and generic. We're building something more thorough, with real business fundamentals baked in.
Travel never sleeps. You should get to.
Being a travel advisor is a hard life because travel doesn't stop. Your clients are scattered across every time zone on earth, and the 3am flight cancellation doesn't care about your schedule.
So we built coverage into the model. RDB runs an in-house overnight team that works 7pm to 7am every day of the year. An in-house weekend team covering Saturdays and Sundays. A vacation coverage team so you can actually take one. All of it exists so you can build a real business without sacrificing a real life.
Services other hosts don't even know exist
Most host agencies offer nothing beyond the basics, so their ICs either go out of house for specialty services or never offer them at all. Either way, that's money left on the table.
RDB offers a concierge team, a hotel greeter team, and a selected-market DMC team, all in-house. On the business side, we help with accounting, operations, legal, insurance, email addresses, and graphic design. The things that eat your week get handled so you can sell travel.
Humans leveraging AI, not an AI travel company
Travel is prehistoric when it comes to tech. We're building technology based on actual IC grievances, and we're training our advisors to work with new tools like AI without letting those tools take over their business.
We're deliberate about this. Remember the NFT craze? We want no part of gimmicky tech theater. Our technologies will be small, but powerful.
Community you can feel, not a Facebook group
Every host agency claims a sense of community. We're leveling up on it.
Our ICs are RDB Keyholders. We host monthly events. Leads we generate go straight to qualified Keyholders, and we're building a Keyholder Specialty Program where Keyholders trade leads with each other. We want Keyholders to feel shared ownership of the brand, because they've earned it.
And we can actually deliver on this, because simply put, we are out there. Our team attends events city-wide and in multiple markets, with a worldwide network of team members, Keyholders, and friends. Our executives' doors are open. Not "open" in the corporate brochure sense. Open.
Entertainment roots, insider access
RDB Hospitality Group grew out of entertainment, and that changes what we can offer. It sharpens our Keyholders' ability to promote their businesses, keeps us at the forefront of the industry in public relations, and brings insider experience and practices that other host agencies simply don't have. The preferred pricing, deals, trainings, and contacts that come with those roots flow directly to our Keyholders.
No cookie cutters here
This is the most important part. Owning a travel business is not cookie-cutter. Every travel company has different needs, and a host agency has to be scrappy, flexible, and ready for whatever gets thrown at it, while encouraging its advisors to innovate. RDB Hospitality Group and the Keyholder program were built for exactly that.