I’ve been retired since April…so, what have I been doing? First off, I’ve been cruising, of course! You can check out my Mariner of the Seas blogs here and my Carnival Elation blogs here. We had a great time on both of those cruises, and we got great deals by belonging to the Loyalty Clubs. Always join the Loyalty Clubs!
My newest challenge
I’ve been thinking about becoming a Travel Agent for awhile, but the cost for training was always more than I wanted to spend. I finally found a group called Cruise Brothers. I’ve seen them before and it always sounded like a scam when they said you could become a travel agent for free. But I did some research and it all sounded legit. I signed up and was assigned a Team Leader who called me. We talked, and I decided to pursue the training. I did have to sign a contract, but I can cancel at any time. It cost me nothing.
So, what’s the catch
Cruise Brothers provides a lot of free training, plus, you can go through their link and train on various Cruise Line sites. This all costs nothing. The catch is that Cruise Brothers gets half of your commission. For me that is fine because they don’t care if I just use the Cruise Brothers site just to book my own travel. For me it’s win-win. I save some money and get some very interesting training. If you’re interested just go to this site. It will tell you more about it. I get nothing if you do, but you may be able to save a bit of money. Commission aren’t really high so far on what I’ve checked, but it helps a bit.
What can you get for training?
Okay, the training is hard. I’ve graduated from the Carnival Academy, which isn’t too bad. I’m pretty familiar with Carnival Cruise Line, so that helped. You don’t get any perks from doing the Carnival training, but it’s a good place to start.
Then I decided to do the Princess University. That was extremely hard and took forever, but I’m retired, I have the time. Princess is the best because after you do all the training and pass the final exam, you get a free cruise! I believe that Cunard is the same. So, I did pass, and I booked my dream trip to Alaska. It’s a 10 day cruise in August 2023. The cruise was free, but I still have to pay for the port charges and tips, plus airfare, but it’s still saving me a lot of money. They had a number of cruises to choose from, including the Panama Canal. I was also able to book the airfare and hotels through Cruise Brothers vendors to get a bit of commission back.
Right now I’m working on the Royal Caribbean Training. There are a lot of classes and a final exam. So far I’ve made it through the Bachelor’s Degree and I’ll start on my Masters soon. I just need a little break. It looks like the perk for the Royal Caribbean Masters is a $50 on board credit. Not sure what I’ll do after that, maybe MSC.
I was able to move my next cruise over to Cruise Brothers, so I’ll get a bit of money back on that. Plus, I managed to sell my first cruise! It was to a friend and a Carnival Cruise. Not sure how much of that I’ll be doing, only time will tell. But I did get a business name, Quiet Cruiser Travel.
But we’re also cruising soon!
We’ll be on Carnival Freedom in two weeks and I’m definitely ready to sail. We’ll be going to Amber Cove and Grand Turk. We haven’t been to Amber Cove since it was brand new, they’ve added a lot since then. And Grand Turk’s last visit was before Covid. I’m hoping to take a local island tour. Be sure to watch for the daily blogs from the ship. If you haven’t yet, be sure to follow me on Facebook. And follow me on YouTube, I’ll be doing a tour of interior room 1278 on the Carnival Freedom soon.
And that’s what I’ve been doing. Not sure what will come of it yet, but it’s keeping me busy. See you soon!
The Quiet Cruiser 