Belgium chocolates and Belgium waffles have made this small European country famous around the world. A travel advisor advocacy portal with a provided message advisors can send their local legislators to inform them of the positive economic impact of the tourism industry, and a custom pre-written “letter to editor” advisors can send their local media.

In this story, Weissmann conducted a roundtable discussion with eight million-dollar travel agents” (as in: that’s how much travel they sell in a year) on how they’ve achieved financial success as an advisor and what other agents can do to step up their knowledge regarding the business side of travel.

In addition to working with individuals and couples, successful luxury travel advisors are always on the lookout for small group opportunities, whether in the form of a group of friends or multigenerational family looking to spend time together or a group united by a special interest, such as a love of gardens, wine or castles.

TripAdvisor knows we’re so busy we prefer the easy one-click option on their site (even if the price isn’t cheaper), but by booking direct you are helping support small businesses (and they’re happier to have you as a client), keeping overall prices down, and cutting out the middleman in the communication and accountability chain in case something goes wrong.

The lack of transparency hurts travelers because they think all of the businesses are fairly represented on TripAdvisor, and because their size and power now means they are too big to ignore, pressuring small businesses to work with” them in order to protect their business reputation.