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Posted In: Publishers Corner

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 »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

Eight Travel Advisors Share Ideas for 2024

(Part 2 of 2. For two more great ideas, see Nine Great Ideas for 2024: Travel Advisors Share New Agendas for the New Year | Travel Research Online. I know that’s 10 in all, I’ve added one more since last week!)

It’s going to be a busy year, travel advisors say. While for some the focus is on building their client base, making it more profitable, or marketing to new customers, others say their biggest challenge in 2024 is time management.

At Cruise Planners-The Zeneri Team, Melissa Shanks is looking more to grow her high-end customer base through a luxury travel club she is organizing with two of her associates Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: Editorial Musings

Today’s world in online! Newsflash- having a strong online presence is crucial for travel professionals and agencies looking to thrive in the competitive travel industry. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by harnessing the power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Some simple strategies we can all take can help us climb search engine rankings and attract organic traffic, ultimately boosting our online visibility, and allowing us to complete with any of the big Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). Let’s dive right in! Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

We got so many great stories, we’ve divided this article into two! Read part 1 here.

You know it’s going to be a great year when a story about what’s new ends up being about how to cope with all the business coming our way.

On the drawing board for 2024, many travel advisors report, are strategies to focus on high-end clients; hire assistants; host more groups; charge fees—or raise them. Some are taking a step into new technologies; others are building new kinds of road maps and vision boards to keep track of where they are Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

It looks like the happiest of new years is headed our way in 2024—but despite the ringing phones and constant emails (or maybe because of them!) travel advisors seem determined this year to have a little fun, to set sail for far-flung destinations, or to take their parents and kids to somewhere they have never been.

After two good years, it seems, the travel industry is ready to travel Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

Scott Austin had been with his host agency for only six months when things started to go wrong. A former hospital CFO, he signed up with Pinnacle Travel in 2022, and immediately immersed himself in learning about the industry first-hand. He traveled extensively with Pinnacle owner Annaliza Proctor to places like Puerto Vallarta and Cancun, and quickly came to consider her a “very, very good friend.”

When his first commission check failed to appear, he let it be. The second time, though, he called the supplier—and was told they had sent the money to Pinnacle 45 days earlier Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

Always have a Plan B, travel advisors say. Pack your patience—and when you’re sailing the Atlantic in December, bring along some Dramamine too. But no amount of planning would have been enough to make my ill-fated cruise on MSC Meraviglia work last week. In the end, it was travel insurance that saved the day for me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

You don’t necessarily have to love a niche to build a great business around it, says Corey Hargarther of Dream Vacations. You just need a great group leader and a unique spin that differentiates you from the competition.

That’s been Hargarther’s plan for his board gaming cruise group, and it’s working. Meeples at Sea, which began with 20 inside cabins on a four-night Carnival cruise out of Jacksonville, has grown to 60, mostly in balcony rooms, on Celebrity Apex.

“It’s not as much about finding a niche that appeals to the masses as it is finding some sort of differentiator Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: Top Headlines

It’s been a crazy December for travel advisor Debbie Sebastian, with sales up 30% over last year in what typically is a slow month. So, when a client demanded an immediate answer to her request for an Iceland itinerary, Sebastian turned to her new assistant, Toby, for help.

“Toby, I need you to write me an itinerary for Iceland that involves less than three hours of driving each day and includes the following list of activities and sites,” she said. In 30 seconds, it was done; Sabastian double-checked it for accuracy, found “it was nearly perfect,” and sent it off to the client.

To Sebastian, in that moment, the fact that TobyAI isn’t human mattered not one bit. The travel-industry-specific version of ChatGPT does what she asks, when she asks for it—and in many cases, better than Sebastian could do it herself.

Two Glasses on a cruise ship rail
AI Generated by VSCreate

After a year or so in development at a sister company to Travel Research Online, Arqiteqt Software, Toby AI made a big leap this week when it was chosen by Travel Leaders Network to be offered to its 5,700 agency locations across the United States and Canada. A version of ChatGPT designed specifically to support travel advisors, it can craft itineraries, draft bios for agent profiles, compose letters and emails for clients, create engaging social media posts, and generate travel images through DALL-E 3.

“We’re very, very busy, but I don’t want my social media algorithms to fall off, so I utilize Toby a lot for posts,” Sebastian said. On a recent Virgin Voyages trip, she told Toby, “I swam with sharks and had Virgin’s great food,” and Toby created an amazing post. “I tweaked it, added some personal touches, and in 10 minutes it was post-ready.” She’s also using it to create customized “bumpers” that add the agency’s information to the beginning and the end of the videos in the Content Portal’s library.

Toby’s also a big help for writing quick emails and ad taglines, she says. “We all can use the ads from suppliers, but they all look the same. Toby gives it a personal perspective – you can set the settings on the tone to humorous or diplomatic; I just asked it to write some ‘humorous, casual and inspiring’ tag lines about escaping winter—and in 30 seconds, it came back with six lines like, ‘Turn winter blues into ocean hues with Thomas Travel Inc., let’s plan your sunshine getaway.’”

For Travel Leaders, “AI is not a fad; it’s a huge opportunity to help our members jump-start their marketing and be more efficient,” says VP of Loyalty Marketing Jim Nathan. “It will take a lot less time to do social media and itineraries—and allowing travel advisors to spend more time selling to prospective clients and servicing existing clients means ultimately they will sell more of our preferred suppliers, so all of us will benefit.”

Travel Leaders research found that less than 20% of travel advisors are using the new crop of artificial intelligence tools at all, Nathan said. And TobyAI is backed by live support from Voyager Social, TRO’s AI company.

“As far as we know, no one in our competitive space is doing this,” he said.

From a tech perspective, Toby AI “pulls on multiple large language models provided by the big players like Open AI, but we’ve trained it with additional knowledge and fine-tuned it specifically to help travel advisors in a wide array of tasks,” says Toby’s developer Ryan Earls. “And over time, we are increasing that to include doing proactive things for you on the Internet at large. We’ll slowly add services like posting on social media, sending an email, or building a full itinerary with photography and videos. So basically, we provide structure for the different tasks a travel advisor would want to do. Toby AI pulls information from approved sources we’ve set up and goes out to the larger Internet if needed.”

Because it can handle multi-step tasks, you could tell it to write a blog post, generate some hashtags, and write a short snippet to publicize your blog post on social media, all branded to your agency. The system also has access to AI-generated images like the ones on this page.

Travel Research Online has been creating tech tools and websites for travel advisors for more than a decade and closely monitors what

Genie coming out of a bottle
AI Generated by VSCreate

they need and want, he said. About a year ago, he and Voyager Social president Richard Earls decided AI was “functionally useful and economically available” enough to integrate into a product to simplify the workflows of travel advisors. “Toby is not ChatGPT,” said Richard Earls. “Toby is trained in travel, remembers the brand voice of the agency, and there is ongoing training and support. Our support team is on hand to assist with any problems. In addition, we have no fewer than 3 different AI models, including Open AI, Anthropic’s Claude2, and Google’s Palm.”

No one gets into the business of selling travel because they love posting on Facebook,” Ryan Earls says. “We wanted to remove the boring parts of running a travel business and let advisors get back to the parts they love.”

Rather than AI bringing more power to the big players like Expedia, Toby AI allows smaller agencies to compete on a new level “because now they can generate content and interact with a multitude of different platforms at the speed of a large company, and still retain the personal connections they have. It makes them more powerful than ever,” he said.

About 700 Travel Leaders advisors attended a three-hour live training session on Toby AI earlier this month; that content is still available in the TL training library, along with a 102-page guide.

Travel Leaders is offering TobyAI to its members at a discounted price; normally, it’s $450 a year or $45 a month, but there are promo codes available from existing subscribers that bring those rates down, basically providing a month for free along with a 7-day Free Trial.

 

PoodleWreath saying "Winter Vibes"Two Glasses on a cruise ship railCat in Outer SpaceCat in a suitcaseGenie coming out of a bottle

 

Posted In: The Rosen Report

It was a Latin-style celebration in Miami last week, as travel partners, travel press and the greater Norwegian Cruise Line family—including Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. president and CEO Harry Sommer, NCL CEO David Herrera and new SVP of North America Sales John Chernesky, who joined the team in April—gathered for the official christening of Norwegian Viva.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

‘Tis the season to give thanks for family, friends and clients—and to show our appreciation by sending them a gift. So we’ve put together some suggestions of some the favorite things of our own staff and our travel advisor readers.

Happy gifting, happy getting, and happy traveling to all.

I’ll start with my personal favorite this past month, as I flew three times from 90-degree weather in the Caribbean to the 50s in New York: a soft, storable and eco-friendly jacket. My Jack Wolfskin Pack and Go jacket, specifically designed for travelers, is made of waterproof, windproof and 100% recycled polyester Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: Editorial Musings

Want to stand out in the competitive travel industry? It’s time to master your marketing strategy. In today’s digital age, a well-rounded approach that combines online and offline tactics is essential. You must think like an octopus and wrap your travel tentacles around your clients. Let’s dive into the key strategies that will help your travel agency thrive. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: Deck Plans

Following the positive response to AmaWaterways’ inaugural Soulful Experience in France this summer, the luxury river cruise line announced a new addition to the 2024 lineup of Soulful Experience river cruise and land packages celebrating Black history and culture along the rivers. Sailing though Portugal from November 13 to 23, 2024, the 10-nightEnticing DouroSoulful Experience encompasses a three-night pre-cruise land package in Lisbon before embarking on AmaDouro in Porto for a seven-night river cruise along the picturesque Douro River Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

Brad Tolkin is a guy who watches the cycles in the travel industry, always on the lookout for those seismic moments that may rock the boat of success for his company and the travel advisors affiliated with it. His take on 2024 for travel advisors? “Buckle up and go get ‘em,” he says. “It’s going to be a busy year.”

Indeed, Tolkin told the 1,000 attendees at the Dream Vacations/CruiseOne annual conference last week, “today we are witnessing another tremendous seismic moment,” the result of “the tailwind the pandemic has left us, plus the ability to work from anywhere, and the acceptance of this from employers. And this genie is never going back into the bottle.” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: Editorial Musings

In an era dominated by social media, it’s tempting to funnel all your digital marketing efforts into platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter (or X or whatever Elon is calling it now). While these platforms undoubtedly offer a vast reach and engagement potential, a recent incident highlights the inherent dangers of relying solely on social media for your online presence. A cautionary tale is the unfortunate experience of a photographer who, after seven years of hard work, saw their business obliterated by Facebook scammers. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

It’s been a record-breaking year in the travel industry—but as 2023 nears an end, travel advisors who sell the Middle East are wondering about the possible fallout of the Israel/Hamas War. Some already are feeling the pinch as suppliers shift itineraries, customers try unsuccessfully to cancel—and travel advisors and their commissions are caught in the middle. Again.

“I have been fighting with Regent since they announced my clients would not be going to Israel and Egypt—which was the whole reason for their trip—and put Greece in its place,” says Samantha Hamilton at Ultimate Vacations. “My clients have already been to Greece and have no desire to go back Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

Artificial intelligence can play chess or pass the bar in every state, and do well on every medical credentials exam. It can fill in the next word in a sentence for you, which makes it seem capable of thinking. It can locate a missing child in the universe of refugee camps. But there is one question it cannot answer: “What would make my customer happy?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

It’s got mountains and oceans, coral reefs and rain forests, mud baths and sulphur springs, and a drive-in volcano. There are affordable hotels with amazing views and well-known hospitality names like Sandals and Zoetry that hug the mountains and rest in the rainforests. While the weather is hot and the towns a little crowded, visitors will find an awful lot to love here—including “the most beautiful hotel room” and “the most beautiful spa” in the world. It’s easy to see why the French and the British fought over this island 14 times. Whether you are looking for the ultimate in privacy and luxury or an affordable, beautiful, romantic and flower-filled Caribbean getaway, you likely can find it on St. Lucia.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: The Rosen Report

Travel Advisor Arrest Sparks Industry Concern

If you’ve been reading my column for any amount of time, I trust you know my goal is always to help the travel industry in general—and travel advisors in particular. To that end, I always try my very hardest to never say anything negative about a travel advisor. But on very rare occasions, the interests of a single TA and those of the industry conflict, and I have to make the hard choice to call them out.

This is one of those times. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: Editorial Musings

Sponsorships: A Strategic Move for Business Growth

We craft comprehensive marketing and business plans each year to foster growth and engagement. While various strategies such as travel nights, travel shows, advertising, direct mail, email campaigns, and Facebook ads have traditionally constituted the marketing arsenal, there’s an often underutilized weapon in the marketing plan – sponsorships. If you haven’t considered incorporating sponsorships into your marketing strategy, you should, and here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted In: Deck Plans

Award-winning luxury river cruise line AmaWaterways today announced details on a series of new combination cruises in Europe debuting in 2025, appealing to travelers’ desire for longer trips. The new “Grand” series of 14-night itineraries, including Grand Seine & BordeauxGrand Seine & Rhône and Grand Rhine & Dutch Canals, are attractively priced and include convenient transfers between rivers where applicable. By combining two popular 7-night sailings into one convenient itinerary, these three curated extended journeys invite travelers to immerse themselves in Read the rest of this entry »