TravelResearchOnline.com Blog

Travel agents sometimes find themselves trapped between two masters, the client and the supplier. Earning a fee from the first and a commission from the second, many agents are haunted by a feeling somewhere in the back of their mind that they are “double dipping”. Indeed, this schizophrenic posture can sometimes create an appearance of impropriety in the minds of ill-informed journalists and consumers who view the travel agency system as antiquated and unnecessary given the information available to anyone who can type an itinerary into an online booking form. Information, of course, is a far cry from being able to make an educated and professional assessment of the information, but that’s another issue.

Travel industry guru Nolan Burris has a good answer that might just assuage your troubled conscience, should you have any problems sleeping with the issue of fees and commissions weighing on your mind. Nolan indicates that the client fee is what you earn for your services to clients and the commission is what you earn for your services to tour operators. After all, Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past year, have you noticed that cruise suppliers are becoming less and less of a “partner?” Are you getting a sense of déjà vu with flashbacks to the mid 90s? Over the past month, the cruise lines have taken a beating from agents on several recent changes.  Are the cruise lines headed the way of the airlines? Is the criticism fair and just? Consider the following and decide. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone… take note. I have a new email address. It’s: chelleistotallyawesome@aol.yahoo.msn.hotmail.com – you can remember that, right? How about homeagnt@yahoo.com? Surely your clients can remember that! They’ll store it in their address books forever. Maybe tvlagnt4u@hotmail.com, not to be confused with trvlagt4u@hotmail.com. Piece of cake, right?

Wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

After a large sale last week, I was reminded of the importance of follow-up. The sale was for two families at Christmas and it was for $26,000.00.

After closing a sale, I always ask the client what the main reasons were that caused them to purchase from us. I find that this is a great learning experience for us to tweak or modify our sales approach. When I asked this client her response was a number of the usual reasons, ” your extensive product knowledge, your taking the time to really understand our vacation requirements and matching your recommendations to our requirements and budget.”  She also mentioned one other area that kind of surprised me. She told me that, as we had discussed she had received quotes from 3 other agencies. Read the rest of this entry »

When agents think of CLIA, they identify Terry Dale, Bob Sharak, and the very popular Bernie and Tom.  But there is another face associated with CLIA, Jim Smith, the Director of Marketing.  And he certainly has been busy with the new enhancements to help travel agents, and the consumer.

TRO: You are certainly a veteran in this business

JS: I’ve been in the industry 39 yrs- Starting in my teens.  From a retail end, I ran over 120 ski trips before I was 21 years old.  Later on I headed the largest consortium, GEM, 

TRO: You’re coming off a “high” with the very successful CLIA Cruise 3Sixty conference in Vancouver.

JS: We had a great group of agents, many new ones attending,  46% of the delegates were Canadian.  We sold out  8 weeks prior to the show.  But it’s on to our next one in Ft. Lauderdale, Apr 14-17th.

TRO: The conference is only one facet of what CLIA is doing.  You’ve been hard at work working on aids to help travel agents.

JS:  We have begun three new initiatives.  The first is the “Industry Events Calendar.”  Events for up to two years in advance, tradeshows, vendor shows, Read the rest of this entry »

Advertising.  What works? What doesn’t?  As a business owner, I could spend all day on this conundrum.  I feel as if I’ve tried it all–newspaper, wedding magazines, bridal shows, local magazines, pay-per-click, radio, even television.  I haven’t seen any kind of response except from pay-per-click.  And we all know, that can get quite costly very quickly.

It seems that in talking with people, they still don’t know where to turn when booking vacations. They have no idea how to find a trusted agent who specializes in their ideal locations. How do we reach these people? Is the local chamber of commerce the trick? Or a networking group perhaps? I’m not sure how I feel about these types of meet-ups considering many of them want you to bring leads to share. I’m not a huge advocate of the “salesman” mentality, so giving out a client’s names to a group of people isn’t really my thing. Read the rest of this entry »

Excuse me, dahrlings, but…
NN## To That!

Kids think they cleverly invented ‘how r u’ and ‘lmao’. Puh-lease. Baby talk. A mere step above pig latin, umpkinpehs. Try entering the code for two open-jaws with extra luggage allowance in GDS. Now that’s coding. It separates the agents from the clients. It’s power.

Unfortunately, Sabre is doing away with code altogether. They’re going all ‘windows’ on us. Now any lay bimbo with a business card can use Sabre.

The Sabre’s unsheathed. Lost its edge. Pointless. Which, as far as I’m concerned, makes it a limp system. I feel very deflated. Read the rest of this entry »