Over the weekend I was helping a friend with a school assignment involving a marketing plan.  As a part of the exercise, she had to justify her business decisions by taking note of the demographics of Florida’s state capital, Tallahassee. In the outline to the assignment, the key demographics were listed as per capita income, population by gender, and age ranges.

As I worked through the project, it occurred to me how little help typical demographic statistics in reality are for a marketing plan. Certainly such numbers  are important criteria in early decision making.  If, for example, you are setting out to launch a travel practice in any given area, you want to know sufficient population is present with enough disposable income.  Beyond that, however, these are the wrong demographics for marketing purposes. Read the rest of this entry »

I have always thought of travel as an act as much spiritual as physical. In many ways, a trip across borders is a microcosm of life’s journey. As beings with innate wanderlust, we ignite an internal shift every time we leave home to gallivant across the globe. There seems to be an inherent human need – a primeval yearning – to explore, move, and discover. Evolution made us nomads, and that genetic code is still written in our cells, urging us to seek new experiences and environments. Read the rest of this entry »

“If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.” – Abraham Lincoln

Louie was one of the hardest working men I had ever met. A restaurant owner, he was up first thing in the morning, worked all day in the kitchen and on the floor and went to bed late at night. The next day, he would do it all again. I was amazed at his ability to put in those hours and I was sure that his new venture would be a great success. A year later, he was out of business. I told Louie’s story to one of my business mentors and he shook his head knowingly. He was not surprised at the restaurant’s failure. “Too many business people have to work hard because they don’t work smart.” Read the rest of this entry »

Have you heard the phrase: “Marketing is everything, and everything is marketing? The ‘marketing mindset’ implies viewing every interaction, every piece of information, and every travel story not simply for what they are but for their potential to captivate attention and inspire travel desires among potential clients. It’s about appreciating the intrinsic emotional power of travel and strategically using those emotional touch points to remind clients that, at heart, they are a dreamer. Read the rest of this entry »

I complained about a post last night making fun of those trapped in the submersible near the Titantic wreck. I was ejected from the group as a result.

I may be mistaken, but here is my perspective:

Read the rest of this entry »

Artificial intelligence has made massive strides recently with image generation. AI systems can now generate highly realistic and customized images that will soon significantly reduce the need for generic stock photography. For travel advisors, AI image generation offers an opportunity to provide clients with personalized visuals of destinations and experiences that are hard or expensive to otherwise capture.

Stock photo websites currently offer an array of generic images of locations, landmarks, hotel rooms, and activities. While useful as a reference, stock photos can lack originality and personalization. Stock photography is often easily identified, and finding a wide variety of images of ethnically diverse people can be challenging. In addition, coming up with the exact photo you want, such as a cat in an astronaut suit in outer space, can be difficult or impossible. If you do find such a photo, chances are good that hundreds of other people have downloaded and are using the same photograph. Read the rest of this entry »

Marketing is about winning new clients and keeping old ones: from the first we achieve growth and from the second stability.  The business trinity of marketing, sales and customer service is oriented to accomplishing exactly those objectives. Smart marketing, relationship sales and good customer service should combine to ensure continual growth.

If only it was that easy. Read the rest of this entry »

Artificial intelligence (AI) has increasingly become a much-discussed tool in the travel sector. For travel professionals, AI has the potential to revolutionize their daily workflow by streamlining tasks, improving customer service, and enhancing the overall travel experience for their clients. Most significant, however, has been the promise of increased productivity and time savings for travel advisors who feel the demands of content marketing stretch them to the limit, especially as solo practitioners. Read the rest of this entry »

Many travel professionals have told me recently they have decided to work on creating a specialized, niche segment for their travel practice. Developing and marketing a niche area of expertise is one of the best ways to differentiate your travel practice from the competition. As an expert in a particular theme or destination, you can quickly establish your travel agency as the only reasonable resource to which consumers should turn when considering travel in your niche venue.

The concept of adopting a niche is often misconstrued. 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. It is about segmenting your marketing efforts to focus on particular groups of people, however. Read the rest of this entry »

Like a shark, you know you have to keep moving forward. In business, there is no such thing as sitting still. Clients come and go. Destinations rise and fall in popularity and demand. There is always something new on the horizon. In fact, if your business is not growing, chances are pretty good you are losing ground. No time for sitting still.

Is it too early to talk about 2024? I don’t think so if you are headed in that direction. Here are five ways to keep both you and your travel practice growing and even thriving. Read the rest of this entry »

How we see ourselves and the profession of travel counseling has much to do with sales psychology. For travel agents the problem is two-fold: The first aspect concerns societal perception of the travel profession in general. The second deals with the individual travel consultant’s personal self-image. Being consciously aware of the influence of these two aspects of one’s personality and working to place self-image in its appropriate context is a worthwhile exercise in becoming a better travel professional. Read the rest of this entry »

Saturday, April 22, is Earth Day. As late as 1986, coal miners in the UK still carried canaries to detect carbon monoxide fumes in the mines. If the canary died, trouble was afoot. These days, the World Wildlife Federation publishes a “species directory” – a list of endangered, vulnerable, and threatened animals and I find it ironic that the list has not been expanded to include humans. Perhaps it would be wrong to list humans under both threatened species and causation because no doubt there is a self-destructive gene somewhere in the human DNA spiral, and it seems to be expressing itself with increasing regularity. Read the rest of this entry »

“Continuous effort, not strength or intelligence, is the key to unlocking our potential.” ~ Winston Churchill

What is the calculus of success? Is there a formula to being really good at whatever you most want to do?

One of the really great characteristics about children is their unfailing knowledge they can do anything.  Draw a picture? Hand them the crayons. Play the drums? Give them those sticks. Converse about the universe? Have a seat and lend an ear.

Somewhere along the way, we adults learn to limit ourselves.  We become convinced of our personal borders. We accept we aren’t musical, we can’t draw, we decide our intelligence has severe limitations. We circumscribe ourselves even as to activities we have never tried!  Can you sculpt a figurine out of a block of stone? How do you know? Why are you certain you cannot do something you have never tried?  And if you have tried, how many times? Read the rest of this entry »

A travel professional I speak with frequently called me the other day to talk about an idea for an article. She wanted to write about the need for agents to continually update their skill set in destinations, technology and sales techniques. I told the agent that I was impressed that she was so deeply interested in continuing education, and I asked her if the other travel agents in her agency felt the same way. She indicated that some did, but in general most seemed content to do things the way they had always been done, to service the clients the agency ownership put in front of them and to clock out at 5:00. I asked the agent what motivated her, and I really liked her answer: “I want to be valuable to the agency’s owners. As long as I am bringing in new business and generating loyalty to the agency, I’m valuable. I take it personally.”

Wow. I could not have said it better myself. Read the rest of this entry »

There is absolutely no doubt that a failure to plan is one of the biggest mistakes many business people make.  Without a solid business plan, even the best travel consultant can fail to act consistently in any given aspect of their practice. Planning is truly essential.

But so is action.

I see far too many travel professionals planning their lives away, getting ready to act, and then… not acting! The problem can induce a near-paralytic state. Too many times we over-plan and over-perfect, and in the process lose valuable opportunities to others who are quicker to act.   Read the rest of this entry »

 

“I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.” ~ Steve Jobs

We have a strange relationship with the word “No.” From childhood, we don’t like hearing the word, and as business people, “No” often signals the premature end to opportunity. Hearing a refusal can be painful.

Unfortunately, our dislike of the word too often means many of us have problems saying “No” ourselves. We have a bias to taking on tasks, of saying “Yes” when at all possible. As a result, we overcommit our time and limited resources. Trying to be positive and agreeable, we find ourselves increasing our own overhead beyond a safe point. Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. ~ Calvin Coolidge

All manner of personalities take on travel consulting. Those who remain in the business more than a couple of years, however, share some common traits that serve to explain their ability to remain in place in an industry so challenging. As President Coolidge indicated, if you are not persistent, there is no other quality to take its place.  There are seldom any shortcuts, just the love of what you are doing and the determination to do it well, taking great pleasure in little successes and not being devastated by the many failures and disappointments. Many people cannot handle failure; they give up, switch course, and head off in a new direction. Even the best, most talented, graciously-gifted people require persistence to succeed. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a lively, ongoing conversation about the role of “artificial intelligence” (AI) in article and blog writing. While there is little doubt that ChatGPT can be incredibly useful as a tool for generating content, some people object to using it for a variety of reasons. One common concern is that using AI-generated content may be seen as a disingenuous outsourcing of your writing to a machine, leading to a lack of authenticity or originality in the content produced by AI. Others point to the potential for errors or inaccuracies in the output generated by AI.

All of this is true, there are risks involved in new technologies. It is also true that the paragraph above was written with ChatGPT. I want to emphasize it was written “with” ChatGPT, which is different from it being written “by” ChatGPT. Read the rest of this entry »

True story: I once asked directions from a man I met in Dublin.  I asked him how to get to a particular address in the city.  He told me, and I quote, “You can’t get there from here.”  For a moment, however brief, I thought all was lost.

Many of your clients feel the same way. They can’t travel because it costs too much.  They can’t travel because they don’t have passports. They can’t travel because they are afraid of terrorism, foreigners, all things German, and strange food. They need some new appliances. Really!

No, not really. In reality, they can’t travel because of you.  They don’t think they can get there from here.  Read the rest of this entry »

Every travel agency seeks visibility in its marketplace. Through advertising, niche marketing, and solid networking, agency owners work to raise the profile of their travel practice above the crowd so the public immediately associates the agency’s brand with the word “travel.” Creating an association strong enough to be top of mind anytime someone thinks of “travel” is no small feat but, especially on a community level, it is achievable. No doubt, in your own community, there is at least one travel agency with more than its proportionate percentage of “mindshare” – people immediately think of that agency when they think of their next cruise or vacation. Read the rest of this entry »

Slump? I ain’t in no slump… I just ain’t hitting. ~ Yogi Berra

I hope nobody told you the travel business was easy.

I’m just back from a travel conference in the great city of Dallas.  The travel professionals in attendance seemed upbeat about business prospects, affirming the general sentiment that pent-up demand for travel is taking hold of the general public. One agent, however, indicated things had not been going her way lately and everyone else’s enthusiasm was just making her feel worse. Her business was down and she didn’t know why.

We have all experienced a slump in our business activity.  Suddenly things grow quiet… too quiet.  The reasons for a slump can be purely individual and unpredictable, but down-turns in business can be reversed if you take appropriate measures. Immediate action is the key. The worst thing you can do is “wait and see”- a slump is psychologically tough to handle, but giving into depression is self-defeating and prolongs the misery.   Read the rest of this entry »