Rounds Travel Agency

So Steven is officially a Travel agent! This started a ways back when Steven and I were planning trips for both our families. My family absolutely LOVES cruises and loves to go on them, talk about them and everything about cruises.. so we have plenty of time on that side of the family to talk about vacations. Well, Steven's dad mentioned a few times how he wishes someone would be a travel agent. Of course I loved that idea, I would love to sit and talk vacations with people, but I am lazy and never want to actually put effort into things like that. Steven took it upon himself to do research on a bunch of different agencies and what ones are legit, which ones we could make money, and overall which one would work the best for him. So he did plenty of research and found a great company that would help him certify. The classes and tests were not easy and it was quite the ordeal, but about two weeks ago he passed the 100 question test (you have to pass with 90% or higher). So now he is an offical travel agent and we have our fancy smancy website and a facebook page.  It has been a fun thing so far, we have given a few quotes out, booked a few cruises (my family) and have a few possible bookings in the future. This is a business that we originally thought would just be a fun thing to do on the side, mainly to benefit ourselves and family, but would maybe get a few hundred dollars here and there from it. After all the fee's and such for the domain names and emails and the business and such we are hoping to just be even the first year.  So! If anyone is thinking about a trip, dont forget to come to us and we can give you a quote and maybe, just maybe you will want to book with us!
 Which brings me to another fun and exciting thing. Since Steven is now a travel agent they have special deals for agents here and there.. the benefits we will notice the most is the fact that our cruises will be cheaper and we can get cruises a little cheaper for our friends and family, which is always nice. But every once in awhile they do special specials :) So, this past week Steven got an email from Carnival saying that they were doing this promotion thing for Travel agents where the agents will get to cruise free with up to three other guests with gratuities and taxes included, of course it was first come first serve. So the promotion started at 10am on Wednesday and was supposed to go for two weeks. I got on the website a little before 10am and made sure we had all the information we needed. Got in the area and hurried and picked a day and time that sounded okay for me (it was from Oct-Dec 2013), typed in all our information and waited anxiously for an email back saying we got in. I was pretty skeptical because we are never this lucky with stuff, in fact we would normally be one that doesnt even have a chance for it. So as the day goes on and we are waiting for an email back saying we got it, we find out that the cruises sold out in 2 mins! Agents are furious that they didnt even get a chance to book one. I start to get a little excited thinking we might have a chance afterall.. so on Thursday we got an email stating that we got a room! And not only did we get a room on a free cruise, but it was a balcony room! Holy smokes I am excited! So, we get to take our kiddos on a cruise, for free (except airfare)! Wow, it doesnt get much better then that! So now we are trying to get some other people to join us and I think we might have a good handful to go with. Its going to be awesome and we are excited and interested in seeing how the kids will do on the cruise. It will be a test cruise to see if its something we would want to spend money on in the future.
 As the days went on we found out that Carnival had over 100,00 travel agents log on for the promotion the first day and they booked less then 1,000 rooms. Pretty crazy!