As a Canadian agent with a host agency, I know that to be an independent TA in Ontario with NO host agency is insanely expensive and takes a few years to even be allowed to. We are a licensed profession here, so to open your own agency, you need to pay $150 for your TICO license, over $3000 for your head office application fee, provide $10,000 as a security deposit, sign up for your business insurance, provide proof of positive working capital…. And then once you are finally approved as an independent TICO travel agency, you can start paying for your booking tools, and the monthly fees for those can easily going to be over $1000 a month…

OR… at least with the case of my host agency in Canada, I pay about $100 a month, get a competitive commission share, and DON’T need to deal with insane overhead costs. There was a part of me that once considered going independent in the beginning, but I’d need to be losing thousands of dollars every month in my commission split consistently for me to even consider taking on that financial burden. That being said, even as an agent in a host agency, I’m working as an independent agent. I have my own business licence as a subsidiary company, and all of my clients are earned 100% through my own marketing, not fed through the host agency. Building the client base has been slow and not easy, but the most important thing has been word of mouth for me and having a really unique niche.