What is the hiring process like at BCD Travel?

-Having recently joined BCD the onboarding process was first rate, I've never experienced such a warmth of welcome and support. -Trusting atmosphere, trusted to be accountable for your actions and supported when you need or require it from leadership. -Open culture, everyone is encouraged to speak up. Challenge the status quo and contribute to success. Nothing is ever off the table and everyone's ideas are welcome. -Remote and hybrid operating culture. BCD puts a significant emphasis on work life balance. I've noticed this from my immediate team and from leadership that taking time to reflect, think and get stuff done as well as support your own family is vitally important. -Although it is a large company you can definitely tell and feel it is family owned and run. From the top down there is a huge sense of care and trust.

-Salary is a little less than where I've been before but it's balanced with better benefits that include PTO, pension contributions etc.

Building relationships with teammates and job security

Low pay. No recognition for growth. Rely on a 3rd party scheduling system. I went to a business college for travel and tourism. They are hiring off the street no experience. Care too much about metrics. Scheduling time off is like pulling teeth. I am being sought out from a company for a 2nd time who sees my worth and came back to make a better offer. BCD could care less and they should. They are going to lose one of their best Government Travel Agents soon

Great work environment Work from home/Work from anywhere

Salary increases Not easy to get a role out of your skills

Even though clients can be very demanding, most of them are lovely and interesting.

High turnover in every department except IT and corporate! Very toxic work environment, they discourage teamwork and growth, encouraged division between the departments, lots of complaints to HR who recommended changes that were not correctly implemented. FWT no longer has any office or even a virtual office in CA, but refuse to publish the Milwaukee address in order to mislead the wealthier California clientele. They pay based on your location, not your worth...so prefer to hire from the Midwest or poor southern states. There's no training or support even though you will often be led to believe there is. They HIGHLY discourage advisor travel or meeting clients. They will not disclose the client reviews. This seems like an effort to control the real reviews of the group department and company overall. It seems like mostly the negative reviews made it to the advisors even though the same clients gave shining emailed reviews of the advisor. There's a lot of shady side-business going on by employees trying to make up for the low pay and "bonuses" (commission lowest in the industry). The systems they use are incredibly outdated and clunky. The land tour department often tries to unnecessarily charge clients for tours when they have to cancel (for example 100% penalty effective immediately @$10k even though the tour operators had not required payment at the time). The tours were very overpriced but the advisors are not allowed to release an alternative until the tours released by the land tour department have met quota. There's no support when you need it, people in power are quick to throw advisors under the bus to the winery or the corporate management instead of taking responsibility for guest complaints. Gaslighting happened regularly. Advisors regularly lost wait-list client bookings due to favoritism/lack of within the company. Several times they promoted employees but had them continue in to work both the old and new position until they "could hire and train a replacement", this came without a worth-based raise in both cases and lasted more than 6 months. Raises are regularly promised but not given. Retaliatory in response to harassment complaints given to HR. No payment for miles or time if you have to commute hours for work outside of the area you were hired for. They hire lawyers outside of the company legal team to try and bully former employees into notorizing an agreement to uphold their bogus, vague non-compete contract. Most of the current advisors are looking for other work or working their own travel business on the side. The bonus pay/commission is one of the lowest in the industry. Run. Just run.

The good thing is that I can work from home frequently, so I have a much better work-life balance.

One downside was the lack of proper training and support from my manager. Instead of teaching me directly, I was sent to learn from other departments according to a training schedule. Each person was supposed to train me for seven days, but some of them were rarely available and often disappeared without providing much guidance. As a result, I was left to learn mostly from Excel files and documents, which was extremely difficult without proper explanations. Later, when the department manager asked how the training was going, I honestly explained that one of the trainers did not have much time to teach me. Surprisingly, that feedback was later used against me, and I was told that I was not a good fit for the team. I found that unfair because I was simply answering a question that I had been asked.