Role design and job descriptions for International travel agencies: who owns the file, the fare and the guest
On an international desk, a file passes from consultant to visa executive to ticketing and to a partner abroad. When roles are vague, each person assumes someone else checked it.
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Share your requirementsWhy role design and job descriptions matters in international travel agencies
A small agency often has people who do a bit of everything. The consultant sells, files the visa form, books the ticket and calls the guest. It works while the team is five people. At fifteen it produces errors, since nobody knows who was meant to check the passport validity or the hotel voucher.
Role design draws lines around work, not people. It names who collects documents, who checks them, who books, who confirms to the guest and who answers calls abroad. Imagine a visa file where the passport had four months left. The role sheet should show who looks for that, and at which step.
How to set it up
1. Map the life of one booking
Trace a typical international booking from enquiry to return, listing every handover and document along the way.
2. Mark where errors have occurred
Mark steps on the map where visa, ticket or voucher errors came up in the last season, and who found them.
3. Draw role boundaries
Write what the consultant, visa executive, ticketing executive and coordinator each own, check and hand over.
4. Write one page per role
Purpose, tasks, decisions they can make alone, who they report to and what good looks like. Learning routes can later use the same pages.
5. Test with a live booking
Run the new roles on a week of bookings and adjust where a handover is unclear.
Check these first
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These take an afternoon and use your own records.
- Ask three staff members who checks passport validity, and compare their answers.
- List errors found only at the airport or the embassy in the last season.
- Check whether new joiners have a written description of what they own.
- See whether anyone is doing three roles because nobody else was named.
GullyHR can do this with you. Read how we approach role design and job descriptions in general, or share your requirements and we will tell you where to start.
Questions owners ask
Yes, a short one page for each role is enough. It saves arguments, helps new joiners and shows where a second person is needed.
Some agencies keep this on the consultant, others use a visa desk. Choose by volume and error history, and make the checker a different person from the preparer.
Once a year and whenever the business adds a new product, such as cruises or student travel. Mark changes on the same page so history is clear.