“How’s business?”, I asked travel advisors.
They responded that it’s going quite well, thank you very much. So well, in fact, that many are experimenting with new ideas—from brick and mortar to new employees, from new team models to more marketing—to keep up with the demand.
“I’ve gone from people calling in fear, to people calling out of curiosity, to people calling to book,” says Dorothy Bystrom in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. So, in September she took her first half-step toward brick and mortar by opening a branch of her agency, Exclusive Trips, inside a women’s clothing boutique that specializes in golf wear. Its customers looking for high-end sports and travel wear are a perfect match with hers looking for luxury trips, she says.
Bystrom’s plan is to spend the first four weeks “figuring out signage and placement,” and then open for business by appointment only. “Our arrangement is that I won’t be there full-time, so I can still go lead groups and do fams, and not have to worry about some kind of obligation to be there.”
A customer of the shop herself, and with a specialty in golf groups, Bystrom partnered with the store’s owner on a few events. When the shop moved to larger quarters, she agreed to pay rent on a corner of her own. Her plan is not to do actual travel planning there, but to reach out and meet new potential customers and get acquainted a bit.
“I don’t have a lot of exposure in the city; I’m not great at social media and I never had a brick and mortar office. So this is inexpensive marketing, as far as I’m concerned,” she says.
Customers came up to her “in droves” on the first day and loved the idea of having a travel professional onsite. And she plans to have suppliers like Collette and Windstar come in as well.
She’s also doing a travel showcase at a golf club—“the first we’ve done in year”—with Collette, TravelBrands and Sandals, for which she is handing out brochures at the shop.
“The one thing I’ve taken away from the past couple of years is to just stop stressing about making everything perfect,” she says. “We’ve come through something that was overwhelming and stressful, and here we still are. I’m so much more relaxed about everything. I deal with it the best I can—and if I can’t deal with it, that’s okay.”
Adding a Niche
At Tropicallie Travels in Milton, GA, Caribbean specialist Allison Carrow took her first step into charging fees with a $100 planning fee for new customers. A former flight attendant with just a couple of years on the travel advisor side, Carrow will sell over $1 million of Caribbean vacations this year—and hopes to grow into a second niche in Europe river cruises, for which her mostly luxury client base often asks, in the coming months.
Adding a new niche is a hard thing to manage, she notes, busy as she is with her existing customers, and hard as it is for a new agent to get invited on fams for a destination she hasn’t yet sold.
“As a newer agent, the only way we get to learn is for someone to put us on a fam—but so many will only take their highest-producing agents,” she says. “I’ve sold every single destination I’ve gone to on a fam within the first three months; I sold St. Barts, I sold Baoase in Curacao three times after coming back from fams. I prefer not to sell a place I have never been. I just want to see everything and soak it all in and be able to tell my clients, ‘Oh my gosh, you have to see this place.’ I love that, at 50 years old, I have found my jam.”
Taking a Team Approach
Boutique Travel Advisors, meanwhile, is looking at a new kind of model for its business, says co-owner Angie Rice. She’s taking a team approach, using more full-time but junior employees, including one who has joined right out of college, to do the administrative work and free up the more senior advisors to do what they do best.
“Your business loses value if your customers won’t work with anyone but you,” Rice says. “I’ll do 80% of the work but then I might say, ‘My business partner Janet has lived in Israel, let me put you in touch with her too.’ So, then our clients get comfortable with other members of the team; and that will make our business more sustainable.”
The team-employee model allows BTA to bring on new people quickly, as they do not have direct client contact, and to reward them with bonuses and commissions for filling in extra roles like blogging or training others.
“Medical practices understand that a doctor doesn’t do the job of a nurse,” she says. “I honestly think a team of five, with two savvy advisors, can create $5 or $6 million in business with this model.”
What she would like to see this year is an industry bulletin board, through a consortium or ASTA perhaps, that matches industry insiders with agencies looking to hire them, and more training on how to run a business with employees rather than independent contractors.
“I don’t know any other industry that says, ‘you should work here because you love it,’” she notes. “There have to be other options to sitting at the computer 12 hours a day—and I think the answer is collaborating.”
Marketing is Key
Dream Vacations franchise owner Jerry March also has a new employee, and of the best kind. His wife Virginia left her full-time job in public service and joined the business full-time. “I’ve really enjoyed having her around all the time, and now she has the ability to travel with me,” he says.
This year they are upping their marketing, doing “double, maybe even triple” the number of Google ads they did in 2019 and “seeing the best return on our investment in 17 years.” Marsh is already sending out “It’s 90 days ‘til Christmas” messages “and seeing some excitement,” he says.
“There are tools out there to help new advisors get started,” says March, who often mentors other Dream Vacations franchisees. “Wear your nametag everywhere you go; get your Google for Business set up and interact with it. Those things make your business go higher without costing too much. We put money into Google for Business in 2019, and then through 2020 and 2021—even though we stopped advertising, our phones kept ringing.”
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.
