As a home-based travel agent, you face many decisions involving your business. One of the most important questions you must answer is whether to affiliate with a host travel agency. Many home-based agents do work alone, though our annual survey of the home-based agent market shows that the majority of our agent readers are affiliated with a host.

Working alone is great if you have an established book of business or specialize in a particular niche or travel product category. At the same time, it means you have to do all your own back-office work, commission tracking, technology support, marketing and sales support, which may not leave you much time for training or actually selling travel.

If you are interested in affiliating with a host, how do you go about the process of selecting one that fits your business? The key is deciding on the focus of your own business before selecting a host. You need to figure out what kinds of travel you want to sell—cruises, tours, resorts, niche specialties, etc. Then you must determine exactly how much and what kind of support you need from a host to help you sell the travel category or categories you’ve selected. Finally, perhaps the most crucial step is to find out how what commission split you get and how quickly you get paid for your sales. It’s called cash flow and, in the end, that’s what will determine the success of your business.

With that in mind, here are some questions you should ask when determining whether a particular host agency is right for your business, using some of the largest hosts in the business as examples.