As owner of Mangata Travel, Beth Hill was often asked by customers if they could come along on her personal vacations. And she always changed the subject. When covid hit, she started to look at things differently—and a new niche was born.
“Women in particular often would say, ‘please take me with you when you go on vacation, I want to travel with you’—but traveling with customers turns a vacation into work,” Hill says. “But when covid came and I had more time to think, I changed my mindset from ‘traveling with others will be a pain’ to ‘I’m going to bring the world to people who don’t want to travel alone.’ It’s really my personal goal to bring far-flung destinations to women who might never go on their own.”
It’s been eight years since Hill traded in a career in financial services to open her agency, and many of her customers are former colleagues looking for high-end FIT trips with an adventurous twist. Adding a second niche, though, is proving to be fun, profitable and personally rewarding.
So far, Hill has led groups of about a dozen to Egypt, Tahiti, and Peru; each trip sold out. Her youngest traveler, 28 years old, signed up for every one, and every future trip as well. In 2023, Hill plans to head to Nepal, Iceland, and Croatia.
The majority of the women in her groups, maybe 70%, are married to husbands who do not like to travel, cannot travel, or cannot take off from work for travel. Many have been laid off or divorced, or are recovering from an illness—and looking for a new beginning, a more meaningful life.
Hill pushes the envelope a little on her trips, she says, with the occasional hard climb and tough hike, and unique experiences like meeting a tattoo artist who taught them that good art begins with thinking about what story you want to tell.
With profits of about $5,000-$7,000 per trip, “I might make more money just staying at home and booking,” she acknowledges. “But I love seeing the joy in people’s faces.”
For most travel advisors looking to a new niche, though, making a profit is a large part of the equation.
Cold Cash from Cold Places
Gang Yang at Polar Dream Travel, for example, is counting on adventure travel in general—and expedition travel in particular—to be the backbone of his agency and his family’s financial future.
Since starting his agency in 2017, he’s booked well over 1,000 customers and earned revenues in the seven figures selling excursions to the polar regions, and taking small groups there himself. It’s a high-income, high-touch sector where travel advisors play a key role, and can stand out for their expertise and knowledge, he says.
“I booked one couple to the Arctic and went with them; we each knew a couple of people onboard from our previous trips—and suddenly I’m booking a group of 12,” he says. “The market is strong.”
Yang does some marketing through local events and a presence on social media through Google and Facebook ads, as well as customer referrals. “This is a niche market; it’s about quality rather than volume,” he says. “There are so many calls and questions. You have to understand that this is a significant investment; some customers talk to me for two years before they book. You have to explain that with expedition cruising there is no set itinerary; we know you will be on the peninsula from Day 4 to Day 7, but there is no set itinerary after that, it all depends on the ice and the weather. You have to make sure they are willing to give it a shot.
“You don’t make the decision for the client; you give them the information and let them make the choice. And then you have to make it a once-in-a-lifetime journey for them.”
Riding the Rivers
Taking a look at waters closer to home, Helen Prochilo of Promal Vacations in Long Beach finds that she has fallen into a new niche without too much effort, thanks to ASTA’s River Cruise Expo. Like all the attendees, she toured a variety of ships, sampled the food and accommodations, and posted lots of pictures on social media—and suddenly her river cruise business had tripled.
“We did tours of each ship—Viking and Scenic and Uniworld, AMA and Amadeus Cruises—and it gave me sharp insights into the differences among the lines,” she says. And when customers responded to the pictures and called “I talked more intelligently. What I paid for that Expo I got back three times in commissions—which are better for river cruises than for ocean. One customer who always booked land vacations before booked her first river cruise, then a tour of Egypt and a Nile cruise, and now she wants to do 14-day cruise next year. If you are looking for a great niche, I recommend you go to the Expo; being able to see those cruise ships side by side is incredibly valuable.”
And speaking of river cruises, after 17 years in business, Europe specialist Suzy Schreiner, owner of Azure Blue Vacations, is looking to build a more customized and high-end niche: chartering yachts in Croatia.
Instead of selling what’s traditional in Europe, river cruises and land tours and FIT, she started crunching the numbers on yachts, which are widely used among Europeans, many of whom go on the same ship every summer. With just 18 cabins, she pictured a yacht as two groups—with a breakeven point of just 8 or 9 cabins.
“The idea of chartering is daunting, because you have to commit for thousands of euros,” she says. But once I started looking at it as two groups I thought, ‘That’s not so hard to do.’”
Working with Lastavica Cruising in Croatia, she has already sold out two yachts for summer 2023 and has 10 cabins sold on a third. In addition to the cruise, she is putting together bespoke itineraries that include traditional Croatia suppliers like Katarina Line, and companies that can arrange wine tastings on the ship and visits to wineries. For her annual Zumba group, she has proposed a Zumba yacht cruise for 2024. In addition, she is being paid by the yacht company to act as a consultant, helping them reach out to other US travel advisors.
“Chartering is such a great opportunity for travel agency owners who want to advance to another level,” she says. “You can do a part-charter on an AMA ship for 30 or 40 cabins, where you can make the charter unique with a wine theme, for example—and still make a higher profit and offer your clients a lower rate. Charters is an opportunity that’s relatively untapped in our industry. It’s really profitable. It’s a really great niche.”
Cheryl’s 40-year career in journalism is bookended by roles in the travel industry, including Executive Editor of Business Travel News in the 1990s, and recently, Editor in Chief of Travel Market Report and admin of Cheryl Rosen’s Group for Travel Professionals, a news and support group on Facebook. As an independent contractor since retiring from the 9-to-5 to travel more, she has written regular articles about the life and business of travel agents for Luxury Travel Advisor, Travel Agent, and Insider Travel Report. She also writes and edits for professional publications in the financial services, business, and technology sectors.