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 that’s not fully covered by your competitors,” Hargarther says. “There are other board gaming cruises—but they are on mass-market cruise lines, and none focus on adults like we do. There’s a lot of avenues to create your own unique way.”
Each April his group of customers, carrying suitcases full of board games, has grown larger and more upscale; he sold out his room block for 2025—and he twice had to request more balcony cabins.
Hargarther himself is not really a board game kind of guy. He plays a few times to engage with the customers, but really his role is to handle the travel, he says. And of course, over the years the travel he books has moved beyond just the annual cruise. One guest has booked seven cruises; one who used to book an inside cabin now has put down a deposit on a Viking expedition.
But the heart of the group is those board games, many of which he had never heard of before hooking up with the “disproportionately Gen X IT couples” who attend “Meeples at Sea, the CruiseCom Boardgaming cruise.” Hargarther manages the website, answers any travel-related questions, and books cruises for the minority of attendees who do not self-book on the website.
“They ask if there is a limit to how many games they can bring, and I say it has to fit in your room,” he says. And really they need little else. This year Hargarther passed on the many activities available on Royal Caribbean and Norwegian, which he has used in the past, and moved to Celebrity, where the group will have the most important thing to them: 24 x 7 access to a conference room in which to play.
Building Bridges at Sea
Ed Brill, meanwhile, has built a niche of players of a different sort at his Dream Vacations franchise. His Silversea cruises and other trips for bridge players differ from the competition by focusing on both high-end travel and high-level education. “We looked at what we could bring to the table that others didn’t, and so we focus on education,” he says.
Today Brill’s multi-channel bridge learning program includes Play Bridge at Sea, Bridge Academy on land (including Ojai CA, Hilton Head, Sarasota and Palm Springs) and a Bridge Professors online program with more than 8,000 students.
A recent cruise to Iceland and a transatlantic trip attracted about 60 players each, though “our goal is to give individual attention to each student, and that’s hard to do when the class is too large. So our sweet spot is 30-40,” Brill says.
This year he did six cruises, two land programs and an online program, growing about 25% since last year, with each group comprising about 40% repeat guests.
For 2024, he’ll be introducing more land programs, including Giorgia Botta’s Bridge Academy, a five-day land extension in Rome following a Rome-to-Venice cruise. It will visit local bridge clubs and meet with local bridge champions. “It’s all about immersion into Italy through bridge,” he says.
Stacey Harrington, too, has built a niche for her Dream Vacations franchise based on bringing a little luxury to her customers’ favorite pastime, Formula One racing.
“My husband loves driving fast. He’s had race cars, and my son is a part-time race driver; he got married at the racetrack. So the need for speed is part of our family,” Harrington says. So she has been building boutique and yacht-style trips, using Formula One as the gateway. Last year, she began working with Azamara; in May, she will take a group to see the Monaco Grand Prix and then visit Barcelona.
“Basically, I help Formula One fans see the world one race at a time,” she says.
Rather than just including a weekend trip, like most of her competitors do, Harrington adds pre and post days across Europe. “My thought is, if you’re going to be in a beautiful part of the world, why only see the race? I hosted a group to Le Mans, we did the race weekend and also three nights in London, then took the Chunnel to Paris for two nights and then we went to the Loire Valley, for a total of eight nights.”
Next year, she will have groups going to the Monaco Grand Prix, Le Mans and the US Grand Prix. “This is my main focus, but it’s not the main revenue driver,” she says. “Probably 60% of my business is groups but not all of them are race-related. I also do a lot of longship cruising (under 1,000 passengers)—those customers are the same demographic.”
Last year, just her second year in business, she sold about $500,000 worth of travel; in 2023, she already has surpassed that mark. But she works hard to get there.
In 2022 she traveled 104 days; right now she is planning to expand to car trips, and so she’s working on an eight-night trip around the Porsche Experience in Northern Italy, including dining at Michelin star restaurants.
Her tips for building a niche? Focus on what you know and don’t try to force it. Find something you know and love and are passionate about and then figure out how to build trips around it.
At All Points Travel in Salt Lake City, meanwhile, Corina Johnson has built a specialty around custom trips for dance and theater groups. When she gave up her career as a dance teacher to open her travel agency 31 years ago, her former colleagues turned to her to book high school dance teams headed to competitions and dance education trips. Over the years, she added theater and other performing arts groups, including student and adult theater groups. In 2024, she will take the Utah Theater Lovers on their eighth trip to New York (she has led more than 50 performing arts trips to The Big Apple). She also has led groups to London, Edinboro, Boston, LA, Las Vegas—anywhere there is a theater. She arranges air, hotels and ground transportation along with dance- or theater-centric activities like meet-and-greets with artists and actors, classes and workshops, performance opportunities, theme park tickets, group lunches and dinners. In all, the theater niche contributes about 20% of her total annual sales.
Disney specialist Holly Ramey, owner of Mickey Travel, has had to add a whole new business for her new niche. Just over a year ago, she partnered with a sports talk show host to launch Atlanta Sports Trips; their biggest group so far took 160 fans to the University of Georgia national football championships. She also put together a spring training trip to watch the Atlanta Braves in March and a trip to Wrigley Field to see the Braves play the Cubs. In 2024, they will do the Braves vs the Yankees in NY, the Angels vs the Braves in Anaheim, the University of Georgia vs Texas in Alabama, and the Atlanta Falcons vs the Carolina Panthers.
Her unique shtick is to have a former athlete come along—in Chicago, they had a former Braves player; in New York to watch the Falcons vs the Jets they will have Brian Sinneran.
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.