Travel Research Online | The voice of the travel agency community

Recently, I was speaking to a colleague about a new salesperson he had just employed. The salesperson was complaining the company did not have a  presentation brochure. If only the company would produce a professional presentation, the salesperson assured his boss, the sales would come flying through the door. My friend wanted to know what I thought, and I told him.

Good sales materials are important, but more important are the clients’ needs.  Company-produced literature, particularly in a 1:1 scenario like travel consulting, was secondary to speaking intelligently and compassionately with the client.
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Even as the first Prima-class ship rolled out, with five more in production behind it, NCL Holdings CEO Frank Del Rio asked his staff what they could do to upgrade the existing fleet—and anted up a $1.5-billion budget, NCL CEO Harry Sommer told the crowd at the Dream Vacations/CruiseOne annual conference onboard Encore last week.

The new Prima class, whose first ship just rolled out, shows NCL’s direction moving forward: elevating the product with upgraded menus, new entertainment, and more staff—and 10,000 travel advisors invited aboard so far to spread the message.

Perillo Tours, the company that has been known as “synonymous with Italy” for three generations of family ownership, is debuting a new tour program for Greece for 2023, and Steve Perillo, the company president, says the tour is flying off the shelf.

“This was not the big year,” he told me. “Next year is the big year. We’re seeing a gigantic wave. We’re about half sold out. Usually, you start selling in January. Prices are up, and nobody cares.”

Travel trade insurance company Trawick International provided a useful snapshot of each major cruise line’s pre-trip health and safety requirements in a TRO webinar last week.  The webinar provided information current as of last week, though fast-moving protocols may potentially change tomorrow. The webinar will be posted on TRO’s Webinar Page on Monday afternoon, August 8th. Read the rest of this entry »

Award-winning luxury river cruise line, AmaWaterways, tells us that travelers can now book unforgettable river cruise vacations on all 2024 itineraries on the iconic rivers of Europe, Africa, Egypt and Asia. With an added reward for early bookings and extended seasons on the Rhine, Danube and Douro rivers, guests have the opportunity to save now when reserving their much-anticipated journeys. Whether celebrating a milestone anniversary, a special birthday or a reunion with friends and family, river cruising with AmaWaterways offers the perfect variety of included tours and culinary experiences to please all ages and types of travelers searching for a more personalized way to reconnect with the world around them.

In order for people to feel glad they know you, you must appear to be interested in them, their lives, their stories, their experiences, and their opinions. As you leave the safe confines of your familiar environment, you are going to meet hundreds of people in the months ahead.

Not every one of these new acquaintances will become a client. You would not want this to be the case. You do need to know, however, that when you meet people for the first time, only three things can result from this introduction.

The word “radical” denotes the idea of getting to the root of a problem. When mathematicians want to find the square root of a number, they use the radical symbol to express the equation. For travel agents, getting radical on a problem means seeking out its cause. One of the best ways to do so is to work backward and ask, quite simply, “WHY?” Read the rest of this entry »

Where did the year go? No, it is not the COVID funk that has our collective sense of time all warped. It seems like yesterday it was spring, and we were all enthused with the glacial pace of the return to normalcy. I looked at the calendar and realized it was November.  NOVEMBER!!  I need to order my 2023 calendar and more to the point, I realized that Thanksgiving is this week! And let’s be honest, there is a lot to be thankful for! Read the rest of this entry »

One could say that Delta Air Lines is looking up and down for new ways to move customers to and from its planes. On the ground, it is partnering with trains in Europe to speed flyers on their way to midtown; in the air, it is looking at mini helicopters to pick them up. Read the rest of this entry »

When the feds removed COVID testing before embarkation regulations a few months ago, most travel advisors and cruise execs cheered. Bookings exploded—in some cases exceeding pre-pandemic levels—and some stock analysts saw relief from the vast debt the Big Three has amassed.

On September 22, Jack Stebbins reported on CNBC that total debt was 35 billion for Carnival, 25 billion for Royal Caribbean, and 14 billion for Norwegian. This is much less than their stock values that day, which were $11.01 billion, 11.18 billion, and 5.61 billion, respectively—less than half of what the companies owed. The article said that the cruise lines’ best hope is the luxury cruise market, which is not as sensitive to economic downturns. This luxury market is centered on “small ships,” with fewer than 1300 guests.

American Cruise Lines proudly announces a brand new 15-Day National Parks & Legendary Rivers itinerary for 2023. Following successful product testing this year, the itinerary will be the country’s largest land-cruise package and the first-ever coupling of a river cruise with the mountain states’ national parks. Read the rest of this entry »

I had to admit to myself that I was a bit nervous about interviewing Laurie McAndish King. As the accomplished writer of An Elephant Ate My Arm: More True Stories from a Curious Traveler, published last year, she’s seen a rise in popularity. This book has won first place in the Paris Book Festival, with individual stories in the collection winning multiple other awards. Her writing voice is clearly her own, a daunting task most writers struggle with on a daily basis. So, yeah, I was clearly nervous that my questions wouldn’t grab her attention. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

From the starting conversation about our video backgrounds, there was a curiosity radiating from the image on the computer. Three minutes in, she’d asked more questions than me. When it naturally came around to a starting point, I launched in with the biggest question first: did you start this collection of stories during the primary part of the pandemic?

Following on the heels of a similar announcement by Norwegian Cruise Lines this week, American Cruise Lines has changed its policy and will roll non-commissionable fees (NCFs) into its fares—and pay travel advisors commission on them. Read the rest of this entry »

Japan is known for its sprawling metropolises, cities that bask in the light of every color from signs and advertisements. Yet, outside these massive cities is an island country with natural beauty that shines bright on the pale petals of the cherry blossom—on the delightful purple of the wisteria tree. Adored by Japanese poets and painters is a sight that soars above them all, the UNESCO World Heritage Mt. Fuji.

Solo travel has become increasingly popular in recent years as more and more people are choosing to explore the world on their own. While it can be an incredibly rewarding and liberating experience, there are also certain considerations that need to be taken into account. The concept of solo travel is sometimes misunderstood  (Read More)

It is a land with little soil, where 96% of its mass is covered in ice, with no indigenous people, no indigenous government. No economic activity exists, except for that in small isolated encampments of scientists and from the incursion of tourism to the island continent. (Read More)

Home to one of the world’s most prestigious universities, Oxford is an architectural, intellectual, and historical gem of England. This small city has the distinction of hosting every style of English architecture starting from the late Anglo-Saxon period forward… (Read More)

Photo Bennett Goldberg

Expedition cruise company Lindblad Expeditions officially named their next generation, all-suite National Geographic Islander II this week in the Galápagos Islands. Read the rest of this entry »

This year, Travel Show Marketing Group’s Las Vegas Travel Agent Forum at Caesars Palace received well-deserved praise from both suppliers and travel professionals for their efforts. Read the rest of this entry »