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Training Your Clients

We have previously discussed the need to train clients. Let’s revisit the discussion. It is not an exaggeration to indicate the success or failure of your travel business will depend on the extent to which you are capable of taking charge of your client relationships and professionally leading them into behavior conducive to traveling safely and well. Top travel professionals train their clients to be good clients. Training your client assists both you and the client to achieve optimal results from every travel planning effort. Read the rest of this entry »

Find Your Niche

One way top travel advisors stand out from the crowd is to develop a niche area of practice. Though we hear the advice to specialize,  the concept of niche marketing is often misunderstood. Niche marketing is a way of helping you focus on locating new clients, not a set of restrictions on your business offerings. Niche marketing is not necessarily about gearing your entire business to a particular type of travel but rather about segmenting your marketing efforts to focus on particular groups of people.  Many travel consultants avoid it as a concept out of fear of having to turn away business outside the chosen niche or being too closely identified with the niche. Properly executed, however, niche marketing is a terrific way of locating and marketing to a group of potential clients in a highly effective and cost-efficient manner. Read the rest of this entry »

We have noted a decided uptick in the number of actions being taken against travel advisors by “copyright trolls.”  Copyright trolls are entities or individuals who scour the internet for the purpose of finding copyright infringements, no matter how slight. These predators primarily target unwitting breaches where images, music, or text have been used without proper permission or license. Once they’ve found a potential infringement, they swiftly send out legal threats or demands for licensing fees, often exorbitant in nature, preying on the fear of costly litigation to compel a quick settlement. Read the rest of this entry »

Public relations and media for travel advisors

Public relations includes:

  • ​media (articles about you),
  • networking
  • speaking opportunities,
  • events; and
  • writing (articles by you).

In each of these efforts, your personality is at the core of the marketing tactic. When the public reads an article about your agency, hears you speak, works with you at an event, or reads an article you have written, they engage you as an individual, not as a faceless company. That encounter is intensely personal and carries an authority that an advertisement cannot. People are trained to ignore advertising. They are equally well-trained to engage those in their presence. Read the rest of this entry »

10 Early Warning Signs of a Problem Client

I want to end this year by thanking our readers and sponsors for their support with one of my favorite columns.

Raise your right hand if you have ever had a problem client, the type of individual that made you reconsider your entire career as a travel professional. Keep your hands raised. Now, raise your left hand if you currently have a problem client. Even at this distance, I can see most of you have both hands in the air. Go ahead and lower your hands, you are going to need them to assist some of these clients to the door. Read the rest of this entry »

Empathy and Sales

As a nation, we are a jaded lot. From Willy Loman to the used-auto hucksters in countless movies, the public in general holds sales people rather low on the scale of esteem. Indeed, most of the people you encounter are so afraid of being “sold” something that they refuse to speak with salespeople when they enter a store or walk onto a car lot. “I’m just looking” is used as the warding spell against the salesperson, and woe to the one who persists beyond that point.

Most travel consultants share this cultural bias against “sales.” Ironic, isn’t it?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Use of AI-Generated Images to promote travel

While I am a proponent of the thoughtful use of “artificial intelligence” (AI), I understand and fully appreciate the concerns many have voiced regarding the training of AI on existing creative works. Critics of AI often raise charges of plagiarism and copyright violation because of the way in which AI integrates existing text, graphics, and art into its generative efforts. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanksgiving

Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” -Dalai Lama

In many ways, Thanksgiving is the greatest of holidays, a reminder of the debt of gratitude we owe to everyone and everything around us.  It is always tempting to magnify our losses and minimize the ordinary, daily miracle.  We long for big, outrageous fortunes and forget the small, mundane but truly astonishing gifts.  One day of the year, however,  is a reminder to contemplate the undeniably interdependent nature of our existence.  How amazingly special is it when a client takes the time and effort to say “Thanks”?  Being on the receiving or giving end of gratitude is a pretty special thing. Especially now.

Everything is connected. We don’t have to look far to find people and institutions deserving of our thanks. Every success we enjoy, every small achievement, is the result of an interplay of grace and circumstance.

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Branding Yourself As a Travel Consultant

Branding is a vitally important component of your overall business and marketing plan. A strong branding strategy ensures the public will clearly understand your company’s value proposition. Poorly implemented, however, a brand strategy can leave clients perplexed and unimpressed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every destination has its distinctive charm, hidden aspects, and traditions most travelers miss in the rush to check off the popular sites listed in travel guides. However, to travel is not merely to see but to experience, understand, and connect. Recommending “slow travel” to those of your clients open to suggestions is a great way of providing them with an alternative experience many will welcome. Here are a few ways to experience a destination in greater depth. Read the rest of this entry »

Training Your Clients

We have previously discussed the need to train clients. Let’s revisit the discussion. It is not an exaggeration to indicate the success or failure of your travel business will depend on the extent to which you are capable of taking charge of your client relationships and professionally leading them into behavior conducive to traveling safely and well.
Read the rest of this entry »

Setting Goals for Your 2024 Business Plan

Just 11 more weeks and 2024 is here. I like both endings and beginnings, the opportunity to evaluate how the year has gone and the opportunity to plan for the next. I’m hoping you have begun to work on a business plan for next year. A business plan has the following two goals:

  • the retention of existing clients; and,
  • the acquisition of new clients.

Your existing clients are your base and represent your steady income. New clients represent growth and replace clients you may lose or fire along the way. Whatever steps we take in building a plan, we will want to ensure that we are acting to either retain desirable existing clients or acquire desirable new ones.
Read the rest of this entry »

Competition Understood

I once had a travel professional take me to task because I provided them with an article in USA Today which also contained advertising for other travel programs. That would never do, she assured me, because like so many other papers and magazines, USA Today was “filled with travel advertising.”  Likewise, many agents will not link to travel articles that include the contact information of hotels or tour operators.

I believe many travel professionals sometimes work with an over-broadly image of their competition because they have failed to properly define their customer base and their proper relationship to their clients. To these few, the landscape is filled with competition. This perspective is informed by the idea that the travel consultant is “selling” travel.  That is what Travelocity does, just as suppliers do.  They sell travel with few frills, often based on price alone. Read the rest of this entry »

The Language of Obligation

I once had the good fortune to attend a couple of three day seminars conducted by Breakthrough Enterprises entitled Falling Awake. Lead by a group of exceptional individuals, Falling Awake is geared to the idea of taking full responsibility for creating the life you most want. Many of my columns are informed by the lessons I have learned as a result of the work I did with this organization. I truly believe any professional would benefit from the Falling Awake curriculum and I commend it to you with the highest of regard.

One of the most interesting and useful pieces of information I brought back home with me was their description of the power of language and the way it shapes our reality. According to the life coaches at Breakthrough, we often trap ourselves with language. Read the rest of this entry »

Expectations

“There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations” ― Jodi Picoult

Setting your expectations high is an important part of moving your travel practice forward. Let me explain.

Unrealized expectations are not strangers to most of us.  It’s pretty common to decide in the course of any given day our clients, our family, our employees, or our friends are not meeting our expectations. Some will tell you even having expectations is futile and the sure path to unhappiness. Have you had someone tell you “Expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed?” People who repeat this aphorism often nod knowingly like they have just let you in on one of life’s real secrets.

Yikes. Read the rest of this entry »

A Talent for Practice

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” ~ Albert Einstein

Talent.  You have it or you don’t… Right? Isn’t talent the reason Bobby Fischer was a grand master chess player at 19?  Isn’t talent why Bill Gates was a boy genius and is now one of the world’s richest man, or why Tiger Woods was a child golf prodigy? Is talent why some people seem to be natural born successes and others struggle up and down the steep slopes of the Pareto Principle their entire life, never breaking into the top 20% of their chosen field?

Maybe not. Read the rest of this entry »

I still hear many travel professionals complaining they don’t “make sales” from their website or their social media efforts. For some inexplicable reason, digital efforts like social media marketing take the brunt force of a lot of misplaced expectations. In a correctly understood marketing campaign, tactical sales is not primarily the role of social media marketing. Public relations doesn’t make “sales” either, but few would diminish its importance. Complaining about Facebook not making sales is like being upset at your cat for not playing fetch – it’s simply not his job. Read the rest of this entry »

“In five to 10 years it will be “far too hot” to be in countries like Greece in July and August.”
James Thornton
CEO, Intrepid Travel

Traveling off-season is an experience everyone should try at least once.  From all appearances, climate change seems to agree.  It appears the “best time” to visit may be shifting. Traveling outside of peak months can save you money and provide a unique travel experience.  But while traveling off-season almost surely means the trip will ultimately cost much less, there are reasons other than the price to travel outside of peak months that will help to ensure your appreciation of the practice.

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What is Your Unique Selling Point?

Your “Unique Selling Point“ or “USP” is something that makes your agency different from all other companies of its type. Is there something about your business so unique customers would rather do business with you based on that one quality alone? Is there a reason to do business with you rather than the agency down the street or online with Travelocity?  Can you easily articulate the reason? If so, you have located your USP and are on the way to better understanding how to build a smart marketing campaign based on that uniqueness. If you have not emphasized your USP in your marketing, then consumers are likely to pass you over for any number of similarly positioned travel agencies – you are just one of the crowd.

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Phishing attacks have come a long way from the generic spam emails filled with glaring red flags. Today, cybercriminals employ sophisticated techniques that exploit human vulnerability and advanced technology to deceive even the most cautious individuals. As we come upon this election season, the threats will be more prolific and more clever. I myself have come very close to falling from more than one of the attempts to get me to click on a dangerous link or filling out a form filled with personal information. The implications of falling from such a scam can be severe. Your accounts and information can be hacked or your system frozen for a “ransomware” demand. Read the rest of this entry »

Up and Running

I have a work in progress called “Up and Running,” a course on marketing for travel advisors. It is an ongoing project with no end in sight. Here it is for those of you who might want to peruse it. In the lower right-hand corner is “Roxie.” You can ask Roxie about the text, and she’s pretty good with answers. My son, Ryan, created her for another project we have. For example, you can ask Roxie, “How can I market my travel agency,” and she will pull the answer out of the text. Read the rest of this entry »