the blocker

Can you charge fees under a host agency?

Usually yes. But it is your host's answer to give, not mine, and the difference between asking well and asking badly is real.

Brianna “Bri” Hill

Travel advisor since 2012

This is the question that stops more advisors than any objection a client has ever raised. Someone decides they are finally going to charge for their time, then remembers they are under a host, assumes the answer is no, and quietly drops it without asking anyone.

In most cases the assumption is wrong. But the honest version of the answer has two halves, and only one of them is mine to give.

Why it is usually a non-issue

A host agency's arrangement with you is mostly about the booking side of your business — accreditation, supplier relationships, commission processing, errors-and-omissions coverage, and the compliance weight that comes with holding an agency. Those exist because of the travel you sell.

A planning fee is a different transaction. Your client is paying you for your time and judgment, before and around any booking. It sits in your relationship with them rather than in the supply chain your host manages.

That is why many hosts are entirely comfortable with fees, and a fair number actively encourage them. It is also why the answer is rarely a flat prohibition — more often it is a set of conditions about how it is handled.

What host agreements tend to address

When a host does have something to say about fees, it is usually one of these rather than a ban:

• How the money moves. Whether the fee is collected by you directly or run through the agency, and whether the agency takes a share of it.
• What it can be called. Some hosts care about terminology, particularly anything that could be read as a charge for the travel itself rather than for your services.
• Whether it falls under their insurance. Errors-and-omissions coverage is written around specific activities, and a paid advisory service may or may not sit inside it.
• Disclosure and paperwork. What the client has to be told, in writing, and when.
• Branding. Whose name the fee is charged under, and what your client-facing documents may say.

None of those are reasons not to charge. They are reasons to ask before you quote your first one, rather than after.

What to ask, specifically

Vague questions get vague answers. “Can I charge fees?” invites a cautious non-committal reply from whoever picks up. These are answerable:

• Does my agreement address client-facing service or planning fees, and can you point me at the clause?
• If I charge one, do I collect it directly or does it go through the agency?
• Does the agency take any percentage of it?
• Is there language you require, or language you prohibit, in how I describe it to a client?
• Does our E&O coverage extend to paid advisory work?
• Do you have other advisors doing this already, and is there anything they got wrong that I should avoid?

That last one is the most useful question in the list and the one almost nobody asks. If other advisors under your host already charge, the path has been walked and someone knows where it is uneven.

If the answer really is no

It happens, and it is worth taking seriously rather than working around. A host that prohibits fees is telling you something about the business model you have signed into, and that is real information about whether the arrangement still fits what you want your practice to be.

What it is not is a verdict on whether charging is right. It is one company's policy, and advisors change hosts.

Once the answer is yes

Then you are back to the actual problem, which was never the host. It is deciding what to charge, saying the number out loud, and holding it when someone pushes.

If you want the groundwork first: the models and the vocabulary, why commission was never going to cover the planning, and thirteen years of my own numbers.