I’ve been at a lot of travel agency and press conferences since the year began, and heard a lot of interesting stories from travel advisors and suppliers. Here are a few I found particularly interesting.
Five years into the business, Susie Flores is among a new batch of advisors redefining the way travel is sold. A cruise lover who always had “that itch to be part of the business,” the mom of four took the leap in March 2019 and became TikTok’s full-time “Cruising Susie.” Even when Covid-19 hit and the world closed, she hung in there, pushing through wherever she could and posting over and over, “It’s going to be okay, the cruise lines will come back.’”
When they did, she booked herself on the very first Royal Caribbean cruise to sail, went live on Instagram – “and my life has never been the same,” she says. “I was crying, literally snot and all, and the video blew up and I developed a following. My goal is to promote positive informative content and to really be relatable to other human beings. And to those who think travel is not affordable, my job is to provide options, helping them get a countdown clock started. I want everyone to have something to look forward to.”
Nowadays she has close to a million TikTok followers—including a surprising number of 65-year-olds. “It’s a new way to sell,” she says. “I’m a visual learner, so I have a whole series of 60-80 second videos for first-time cruisers on my website: What does embarkation mean? Do you need a passport for your cruise? How can you prevent seasickness? That’s how they find me.”
She and one subagent sold close to $3 million worth of travel last year, almost all of it cruise; she is among the top three sellers of Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Virgin Voyages. She is bringing on two more subagents for 2024, and hosting her first big group, on Celebrity Edge to Alaska. And with $600,000 on the books in the first two months of 2024, she has one more goal. This year she will focus on getting a new kind of training, in how to run the business side of the house.
I also liked this story from the supplier side:
Are you stuck on selling the same Caribbean beach resorts over and over? It’s time to specialize in some unique aspect, like culinary groups that visit different islands or “transformative travel,” the latest trend in wellness—and the local tourism boards are happy to help steer you in the right direction, said a panel of boards hosted by Kelly Fontenelle at the New York Travel and Adventure Show. The Bahamas alone include 700 islands to explore, and excursions from paddleboard yoga to culinary tours. Sell an island that’s less traveled—Eleuthra of the pink sands, perhaps—and then get out into the community to a local fish fry or gift shop, and post post post on social media, they said.
The beautiful thing about the Caribbean is its diversity. St. Lucia, for example, was first settled by Indians and then Africans; that Creolization is what gives the island its flavor and makes it interesting. Tourism boards can help you build a people-to-people program that connects you or your guests with local groups; nurses or social workers or teachers can visit local hospitals or schools, for example. Foodies can island hop for the Food and Rum festival, the Pineapple Festival, Creole Heritage Month, the Crab Festival. Sporty crowds can play cricket and pickleball; active travelers can plant mangoes; environmentalists can visit the flamingo sanctuary or coral reef farm.
Dive into a specialty, they said, and build a group to dive with you.
The best stories, though, are always those about facing adversity, fighting the good fight, and overcoming the odds.
Perhaps the most memorable story I heard was from Tricia Meyer of All About Travel in Three Rivers, MI, who lost her faith in the industry when she was scammed out of $70,000 in commissions in 2018. But she is back this year to give it a second try.
Meyer was one of many travel advisors taken in by Travel Troops, a host agency headed by Matt Schumacher, a man she thought was a friend, and to whom she transferred close to $1 million in bookings when she joined up. With business bustling, she hired five sub-agents to handle leisure customers and focused on her niche of destination weddings; soon she was one of Travel Troops’ top-selling agents, with close to $1.5 million in bookings. Then one big commission check came due and her “friend” ghosted her. She considered going to local police, but didn’t want to leave behind the 37 other Travel Troops agents, who together were owed a total of $484,000. So she put her pre-law education to use—and went to the FBI.
“I spent the next two years working with the FBI to build the case, explaining to them how commissions work, how this could happen. I needed a steady paycheck, though, so I walked away from the travel industry.”
Schumacher pleaded guilty and went to jail. Left with no income, Meyer took a full-time job and tried to forget this most painful chapter in her life.
What hurts most, she says, are the comments she hears or sees posted about how dumb the agents involved were to let this happen, and the lack of support from travel industry partners, none of whom were able to help the agents in any way. Schumacher is getting out on early release this month, but Meyer does not see how he will ever repay his debts.
Still, she is beginning to once again feel the pull of the industry she loves. “I made three promises to myself when this happened: that I would stop him; that I would take a break and give myself a chance to reset; and that if I ever got back into the industry I’d do something to make a positive change, to help agents who find themselves in this position,” she says.
In the past few months, “scared to come out and not sure I could back it up,” she sold about $250,000 to friends and family. She credits “that True Grit mentality – you show up, you do the work, slow and steady, and you are rewarded. I haven’t seen that reward yet, and I am starting from ground zero again. But I am dipping my toe back in the industry that I love.”
Welcome home, Tricia.
And Internova’s Focus 2024: The Power of Partnership offered a few good ones.
Julie Cuesta, EVP international marketing at MMGY Global shared some data from the brand-new “Portrait of the American and Canadian International Traveler.” She noted that travel trends are “very generational.” Asia is very popular with Gen Z, for example, but 82% of US travelers want to visit multiple locations when they travel. That’s good news for travel advisors, because “once clients start moving around it gets very complex.”
Another interesting takeaway: Travelers choosing a destination are heavily – and not wisely— influenced by airfares alone, without taking into account the cost of hotels and restaurants. That’s another opportunity for travel advisors to show their expertise by pointing how the full price can make a different destination a better value.
And when it comes to influencers, YouTube comes up on the list for the first time. US millennials are not asking family and friends where they should go; 70% are using social media. And more than half decide on the destination first, so it’s really important for tourism boards to help educate travel advisors about their destinations.
Meanwhile, “Remember where you were when the internet first came out? This is the year we’ll be saying that about AI,” said travel advisor and AI expert Susan Black. Tourism is a perfect fit for artificial intelligence, which can generate pictures and itineraries and automate mundane tasks for busy travel advisors. Her list includes 110 useful apps, including:
Personalized itinerary generators: Tripnary, Utrip, Inspirock
Virtual Travel Assistants and chatbots: Intercom, Drift, LivePerson
Immersive virtual reality and 360 Tours: Matterport, Klapty, Kuula
Multilingual Content Generators that can caption your posts for international markets: Jasper.ai, Deepi, Google Translate
Automated social media management: She uses Hootsuite to post 6,000 pieces a month
Black nowadays is filming 360-degree tours in cities around the world that she shares with other travel advisors.
Be clear in your commands, is her top advice. Say something like: “I am a travel advisor with three clients interested in off the beaten path trips in Germany, and also to explore Baden Baden or Stuttgard. Write a robust itinerary for 50-year-olds who are affluent and well traveled and love to gamble.” Then ask more questions. Ask for hotels, for sample budgets in high season and shoulder season.
And on the luxury travel advisor panel, Curtis Parris of Global Travel Collection noted that these days clients are being strategic about how they are spending their time, “not rushing out like right after the pandemic.” He too sees a growing interest in “bio tech wellness, with elements of neuroscience and nutrition. People are working out their schedules around when these physicians are at these resorts.”
If you have a story to tell, please reach and tell it to Cheryl at crosentravel@gmail.com, on or off the record.
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.
