An interesting commission.

In Australia, every tour or trip or touristy thing that you could possibly book has a commission fee attached to it. If you book a tour of Uluru at the front desk of your hostel they will receive 5% of the cost of the trip, or so, depending on the deal the hostel and the tour company has made. Here, at the Bat House, we book tours and things for people. This means that the 5% that would normally go to a money-grabbing party hostel (one of the only other places in town to make a booking) actually goes to bat and rainforest research and restoration projects. In this country, one that runs on tourism, you can find many places such as this one that will also make bookings for you. From now on, I’m going to try to book events through organizations that actually really need my money. I’m going to take the trip, I might as well give a small percentage of my money to an organization that will put the funds back into the local community or the environment.

This is just an interesting observation I’ve made over the past few days since I’ve been running the Bat House. The commission I make from a simple phone call can actually double the income for the day. I don’t push the tours because that isn’t my job, but it’s great when people ask me to book for them and we have a selection of pamphlets and posters about local attractions. I’m going to keep looking for places like this as I make my way down the coast and hopefully my monies will go to some good cause as well as some great adventures!