Travel Products and Destinations
Building the Product Map
This domain tests breadth: air, hotel, cruise, rail, car, tour, and packaged travel, plus destination knowledge. Know the defining features that change the client's experience and the agency's risk. For air, understand fare families, change and cancellation rules, baggage, seat selection, and the difference between a ticket and a reservation. For hotels, know room categories, meal plans, cancellation windows, and resort fees. For cruise, know cabin categories, deposit and final-payment schedules, gratuities, and port-of-call changes. For rail, know reservation-required versus flexible tickets and pass restrictions.
Destination Knowledge
Expect questions on seasonality, visa and entry basics, time zones, currency, climate, and accessibility. You are not expected to memorize every country's rules, but you should know where to verify them and that entry requirements can change. Know the difference between a passport validity rule and a visa requirement.
Traps to Watch
Questions often hinge on who bears the risk - supplier, agency, or traveler. Watch for distractors that treat a nonrefundable deposit as refundable, assume a cruise line guarantees an itinerary, or confuse travel insurance with a cancellation waiver. Also watch for "always/never" language and for products that sound similar but differ in flexibility.
Worked Example
A client books a cruise with a refundable deposit, then cancels before final payment. Rule of thumb: trace the money through the supplier's schedule - deposit terms, final-payment date, and penalty phase - rather than assuming a single cancellation policy applies.
Rule of Thumb
Match the product's flexibility to the client's uncertainty; the more changeable the plans, the more the fare rules matter.