Travel Agency and Tour Operations
What the exam tests
This domain separates a travel agency (retail seller of others' products) from a tour operator (assembles and runs its own packages), then tests documentation, itinerary logic and, above all, package costing. Numerical costing questions appear almost every year.
Core rules and concepts
- Agency income is commission from principals (airline, hotel, IRCTC); operator income is markup on an assembled package.
- Documents: passport (usually six months' validity beyond return), visa, PNR (the booking record locator), e-ticket number, boarding pass, insurance, vouchers.
- PNR is not the ticket number; one PNR can hold several passengers and several flights.
- GDS platforms - Amadeus, Sabre, Galileo/Travelport - hold availability, fares and bookings.
- Tour types: FIT (free independent traveller), GIT (group inclusive tour), incentive, MICE, special-interest, ad-hoc vs series departures.
- A workable itinerary respects geography (no zig-zag routing), minimum connecting time, opening days of monuments, and a realistic pace.
- Costing sequence: land cost + air/rail + markup + GST + TCS where applicable, then divide by paying passengers.
Worked example
A 4-night Varanasi–Ayodhya package for 20 people: hotel 20 rooms × 4 nights × ₹2,500 = ₹2,00,000; coach ₹60,000; guide and monument entries ₹20,000. Total ₹2,80,000, so ₹14,000 per person. Add 15% markup = ₹16,100; add 5% GST on the tour operator's service = ₹16,905, quoted as ₹16,900 per person. Note the order: markup first, tax on the marked-up figure, never tax on cost alone.
Traps that cost marks
Quoting net cost as selling price; taxing before adding markup; forgetting the single supplement for solo travellers; ignoring child-with-bed and child-without-bed rates; promising a monument visit on its weekly closing day; confusing TAAI (Indian travel agents' association) with IATA (airline accreditation body).