YTC vs Travel Counsellors vs The Travel Franchise: Which Should You Join?

Three names come up again and again when someone in the UK decides to sell holidays from home. Travel Counsellors, The Travel Franchise, and us. They are not the same kind of business, and the differences show up in your bank account long before they show up in your day job.

What follows is a comparison built only on what each company says on its own website, plus our own numbers in full. Where a competitor does not publish a figure, this article says so rather than guessing at one.

The short version

	Your Travel Consultant	Travel Counsellors	The Travel Franchise
Model	Monthly membership	Franchise	Franchise
Cost to start	£99 joining fee	Not published; the careers site asks that you are "able to fund your initial training"	Lite package advertised "from just £995"
Ongoing cost	£85 a month	Not published	Not published
Your commission share	80%	Not published	Described as "industry-leading"; no figure given
Contract	Cancel any time	Franchise agreement	Franchise agreement
Refund offer	None; there is nothing large to refund	None advertised	Money-Back Challenge on qualifying packages

From 1 September 2026 our Pioneer membership is £85 a month with a one-off £99 joining fee, and you keep 80% of the commission on everything you sell. Those two numbers are on our pricing page and in this article because we think you should be able to work out your break-even point before you speak to anybody.

Travel Counsellors

Travel Counsellors is the established name, and for good reason. It has been going since 1994, it operates in several countries, and it has a Support Hub with hundreds of staff behind the people selling. Its careers site lists eight entry routes depending on your background, from Leisure and Corporate through to a Travel Academy for people with no industry experience at all, and it describes coaching from a relationship management team plus a mentor for your first six months.

Two things on that site are worth reading carefully. It asks that applicants are "able to fund your initial training", and that you are "comfortable with earning on a commission-only basis". Neither the training cost nor the commission split appears anywhere public. You find out both on a call.

The site quotes an average of £32,000 a year and says the model supports six-figure earnings for its top people. That average is worth holding onto when you compare offers, because an average tells you far more than a best case does.

If you want the weight of a large, long-established brand behind your name and you can fund a training programme up front, Travel Counsellors is a serious option. Just get the split in writing early.

The Travel Franchise

The Travel Franchise runs a tiered franchise. Its own site currently promotes a Lite package "from just £995", described as a mentorship-focused route into the industry with training, support and business tools included, and an Elite package pitched as the full experience with daily support, admin, and flexible payment options.

The headline feature is the Money-Back Challenge. The company states that "your entire franchise investment could be refunded" if you hit a set commission level in your first twelve months. That is a genuinely unusual offer and it deserves credit. It is also worth understanding precisely: the refund is conditional on a sales target, so ask what the target is, whether it is measured on commission earned or holidays travelled, and what happens if you land it in month thirteen.

Commission is described on the site as "industry-leading", with no percentage attached. Elite package pricing is also not shown on the packages page. Both come from the sales conversation.

How we do it, and why

We built Your Travel Consultant around a straightforward question. If a home-working agent is doing the selling, the client care and the follow-up, why does the host keep the larger half of the money?

So the split runs the other way. You keep 80% of the commission, we keep 20%, and the membership is £85 a month with a £99 joining fee to get you set up. There is no franchise buy-in, no five-year agreement, and no minimum sales target attached to any of it. If it stops working for you, you cancel.

Bookings sit under our ATOL and PTS protection, so your clients get the same financial cover they would expect from a high street agency, and the money is handled through a trust arrangement rather than your own account. You also get the quoting and booking platform, the AI toolkit, supplier access, and a named person to call when a booking goes sideways at 9pm on a Friday.

We have written elsewhere about how commission actually flows from supplier to agent, which is worth reading before you compare any two offers, because "80% of commission" and "80% of the sale" are wildly different things and some hosts are vague about which one they mean.

Working out which one suits you

Start with what you can afford to lose, not what you hope to earn. A franchise buy-in is money out of your pocket before your first booking, and it takes a while to earn back on holidays that in many cases have not travelled yet. A monthly membership costs less to test and less to walk away from, which matters more than most people expect in year one.

Then look at when you actually get paid. Across the industry, commission usually lands after the client has travelled, which can be many months after they booked. Ask every host the same question: what is the gap between the deposit and my money?

Ask about the split as a number. If a company will not give you a percentage before you have booked a call, that is information in itself. We are not suggesting anything is hidden. It is simply how franchise sales work, and it does mean the comparison has to happen in your notebook rather than on a webpage.

Finally, be honest about how much hand-holding you want. Travel Counsellors' support hub and mentor scheme, and The Travel Franchise's overseas mentorship trips, are real advantages for someone coming in cold, and they are part of what the up-front money buys. Our training is included in the membership and runs at your pace, which suits people who are already comfortable in travel or comfortable teaching themselves.

The comparison we would actually make

Take your realistic first-year sales figure and run it through all three. Say you sell £150,000 of holidays and earn 10% commission from suppliers, so £15,000 in the pot. On our model you keep £12,000, and your costs are £99 plus twelve months at £85, which is £1,119. On a franchise at an unknown split with a £5,000 or £15,000 buy-in, you cannot finish the sum. So get the split, put it in the same spreadsheet, and see what comes out.

That is the whole argument. Not that the others are bad businesses. They are not. It is that you should be able to do this arithmetic before anybody sells to you.

Ready to look properly?

You can read our full terms and join in about ten minutes, or book a call with Simon if you would rather talk it through first. Either way, our numbers are on the page before you start.

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Common questions

Is a travel franchise better than a host agency membership?

Neither is better in the abstract. A franchise costs more up front and usually comes with more structured onboarding and a longer commitment. A membership costs less to start and less to leave. Your answer depends on how much capital you can risk and how much structure you want.

What does Travel Counsellors cost to join?

Travel Counsellors does not publish a joining figure on its careers site. It states that applicants should be able to fund their initial training and that earnings are commission-only. You will need to ask their franchise team directly.

What commission do The Travel Franchise franchisees keep?

The company describes its commissions as "industry-leading" but does not publish a percentage on its packages page. Ask for the number in writing before you commit.

What does YTC cost and what do I keep?

From 1 September 2026, £85 a month plus a one-off £99 joining fee, and you keep 80% of the commission on every booking. No franchise fee, no minimum sales, cancel any time.

Are my clients protected either way?

With us, bookings are covered by ATOL and PTS financial protection. Ask any host or franchisor exactly which protections apply to which booking types, because package holidays, flight-only and accommodation-only are treated differently under UK rules.

Figures for Travel Counsellors and The Travel Franchise are taken from their own public websites in August 2026 and may change. Check with them directly before making a decision.