TravelResearchOnline.com Blog

Don’t we all seek a little comfort?  Don’t we all crave some well-being, some peace of mind, some tranquility? Don’t we want to be satisfied?

Well, yes. Maybe. But as I was writing, that last one threw me a curve.  Bells went off and flags went up. Maybe it’s the puritan work ethic boiling in my cauldron, but I’m not quite certain.

I don’t know the answer precisely and I have a severely  limited perspective, admittedly. But its my personal observation we are at our best when we are working hard, striving for a goal.  Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. More phone calls are made on Mather’s Day than any other day of the year because, well, let’s face it, we all love our mothers. But what about the clients that are mothers? Did you call to wish them a Happy Mother’s Day? I did. Sort of.  I sent them an email broadcast wishing them well. No pitch for a trip. No cheerleading for how great we are. No links to our blog. Just a simple wish.  And it paid off for me—as it usually does when I contact my clients on ten special days during the year.  So what did I get out of it? Read the rest of this entry »

As I meet agents all over the world, many wonder what makes me qualified to speak with authority to the travel industry. It’s a legitimate question and I am happy to  explain. In 1979 I decided to change careers. “I stopped being a starving musician and started being a starving travel agent.” I’ve been a professional speaker and author since 1999 and I often mention the previous quote in my presentations. When I speak to travel agents, it’s always met with laughter and giggles. It was a joke that rang true 31 years ago and still sounds familiar to many of today’s travel professionals. But, some things have changed. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve discussed group cruise pricing, finding group business and hosting a cruise night. Next in this series is promotion of your group.

This is everyone’s favorite part to hate – promotion of a cruise sounds rather simple, but it can fall flat, leaving you with no group at all, or a much smaller one than you anticipated. There are a few nuggets you need to understand right away.

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Ralph Grizzle founded the Avid Cruiser in 2004, first a print magazine before going fully digital in 2007. He began his journalistic career at the age of 32, following the conclusion of a ‘sabbatical decade.’ From 1980 through 1990, Ralph bicycled across America, pedaled through Europe and island-hopped the South Pacific. At the end of his travels he landed in Switzerland before returning home, where he settled, quite naturally, into a career of travel writing.

Now, over 20 years later, Ralph’s work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and numerous consumer magazines. The North American Travel Journalism Association awarded his article, “Ship Shape”, which appeared in the September 2005 issue of Hemispheres, in the category of ‘Best Cruise Writing.’ He has also published four books, including Remembering Charles Kuralt.

TRO: What inspired your love of travel?

RG: It’s really the same thing that inspires me today, which is a love for seeing how other people live, tasting the food they eat, experiencing the lifestyles they live, hearing the languages they speak. Plus I love connecting with others. What I’ve noticed about Americans is we love to connect to other people. I haven’t found that to be so true in other countries but here, for some reason, we really care and we want to connect.

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Do you find yourself involved in self-sabotage?   If so you’re not alone, I do it too.

I’ve always struggled with self-confidence.  Whenever I start to succeed, sometimes I find myself not taking that critical next step toward my goal.  I tend to do this when things are going along great and then all of a sudden I get scared.  Yes, I get scared of success.

For a while, I found comfort in a group of people willing to lament with me.  They let me cry on their shoulders, told me nice things that tickled my ears, like, “you tried,” and, “its ok that things didn’t work out.”  They were trying to make me feel “better” so that was ok, but in reality it wasn’t helping me. Read the rest of this entry »

We all use email in our work – it’s an indispensable part of our operations and, truthfully, we couldn’t do what we do as efficiently without it. But, there are times when email becomes a huge monster that prevents us from getting any work done and can be the cause of many frustrations. One travel agent I know gets so much supplier email that her client email would easily get lost in the inbox maelstrom if she didn’t practice good email management. Here are four strong tips for fighting and taming the email monster!

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