Marketing is about winning new clients and keeping old ones: from the first we achieve growth and from the second stability.  The business trinity of marketing, sales and customer service is oriented to accomplishing exactly those objectives. Smart marketing, relationship sales and good customer service should combine to ensure continual growth.

If only it was that easy. Read the rest of this entry »

Artificial intelligence (AI) has increasingly become a much-discussed tool in the travel sector. For travel professionals, AI has the potential to revolutionize their daily workflow by streamlining tasks, improving customer service, and enhancing the overall travel experience for their clients. Most significant, however, has been the promise of increased productivity and time savings for travel advisors who feel the demands of content marketing stretch them to the limit, especially as solo practitioners. Read the rest of this entry »

Give Toby a chance to respond to you when using GPT4. He may appear “Stalled” but he is just thinking hard. If you don’t mind the wait, he will respond. You can also drop back to GPT 3.5 if time is of the essence to you.

Many travel professionals have told me recently they have decided to work on creating a specialized, niche segment for their travel practice. Developing and marketing a niche area of expertise is one of the best ways to differentiate your travel practice from the competition. As an expert in a particular theme or destination, you can quickly establish your travel agency as the only reasonable resource to which consumers should turn when considering travel in your niche venue.

The concept of adopting a niche is often misconstrued. Niche marketing is a way of helping you focus on locating new clients, not a set of restrictions on your business offerings. Niche marketing is not necessarily about gearing your entire business to a particular type of travel. It is about segmenting your marketing efforts to focus on particular groups of people, however. Read the rest of this entry »

San Juan, Puerto Rico – In the ever-evolving landscape of the travel industry, the notion of a Host Agency has undergone significant growth, leading to the emergence of various business models that have caused confusion regarding its true definition. Recognizing the need for clarity and standardization, the Professionals Association of Travel Hosts (PATH) was established to set operating standards and ensure strict adherence among its members. For travel agent professionals seeking excellence in host agencies, the gold standard can be easily found within the list of PATH members. Read the rest of this entry »

Like a shark, you know you have to keep moving forward. In business, there is no such thing as sitting still. Clients come and go. Destinations rise and fall in popularity and demand. There is always something new on the horizon. In fact, if your business is not growing, chances are pretty good you are losing ground. No time for sitting still.

Is it too early to talk about 2024? I don’t think so if you are headed in that direction. Here are five ways to keep both you and your travel practice growing and even thriving. Read the rest of this entry »

How we see ourselves and the profession of travel counseling has much to do with sales psychology. For travel agents the problem is two-fold: The first aspect concerns societal perception of the travel profession in general. The second deals with the individual travel consultant’s personal self-image. Being consciously aware of the influence of these two aspects of one’s personality and working to place self-image in its appropriate context is a worthwhile exercise in becoming a better travel professional. Read the rest of this entry »

Saturday, April 22, is Earth Day. As late as 1986, coal miners in the UK still carried canaries to detect carbon monoxide fumes in the mines. If the canary died, trouble was afoot. These days, the World Wildlife Federation publishes a “species directory” – a list of endangered, vulnerable, and threatened animals and I find it ironic that the list has not been expanded to include humans. Perhaps it would be wrong to list humans under both threatened species and causation because no doubt there is a self-destructive gene somewhere in the human DNA spiral, and it seems to be expressing itself with increasing regularity. Read the rest of this entry »

“Continuous effort, not strength or intelligence, is the key to unlocking our potential.” ~ Winston Churchill

What is the calculus of success? Is there a formula to being really good at whatever you most want to do?

One of the really great characteristics about children is their unfailing knowledge they can do anything.  Draw a picture? Hand them the crayons. Play the drums? Give them those sticks. Converse about the universe? Have a seat and lend an ear.

Somewhere along the way, we adults learn to limit ourselves.  We become convinced of our personal borders. We accept we aren’t musical, we can’t draw, we decide our intelligence has severe limitations. We circumscribe ourselves even as to activities we have never tried!  Can you sculpt a figurine out of a block of stone? How do you know? Why are you certain you cannot do something you have never tried?  And if you have tried, how many times? Read the rest of this entry »

A travel professional I speak with frequently called me the other day to talk about an idea for an article. She wanted to write about the need for agents to continually update their skill set in destinations, technology and sales techniques. I told the agent that I was impressed that she was so deeply interested in continuing education, and I asked her if the other travel agents in her agency felt the same way. She indicated that some did, but in general most seemed content to do things the way they had always been done, to service the clients the agency ownership put in front of them and to clock out at 5:00. I asked the agent what motivated her, and I really liked her answer: “I want to be valuable to the agency’s owners. As long as I am bringing in new business and generating loyalty to the agency, I’m valuable. I take it personally.”

Wow. I could not have said it better myself. Read the rest of this entry »

 

“I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.” ~ Steve Jobs

We have a strange relationship with the word “No.” From childhood, we don’t like hearing the word, and as business people, “No” often signals the premature end to opportunity. Hearing a refusal can be painful.

Unfortunately, our dislike of the word too often means many of us have problems saying “No” ourselves. We have a bias to taking on tasks, of saying “Yes” when at all possible. As a result, we overcommit our time and limited resources. Trying to be positive and agreeable, we find ourselves increasing our own overhead beyond a safe point. Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. ~ Calvin Coolidge

All manner of personalities take on travel consulting. Those who remain in the business more than a couple of years, however, share some common traits that serve to explain their ability to remain in place in an industry so challenging. As President Coolidge indicated, if you are not persistent, there is no other quality to take its place.  There are seldom any shortcuts, just the love of what you are doing and the determination to do it well, taking great pleasure in little successes and not being devastated by the many failures and disappointments. Many people cannot handle failure; they give up, switch course, and head off in a new direction. Even the best, most talented, graciously-gifted people require persistence to succeed. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a lively, ongoing conversation about the role of “artificial intelligence” (AI) in article and blog writing. While there is little doubt that ChatGPT can be incredibly useful as a tool for generating content, some people object to using it for a variety of reasons. One common concern is that using AI-generated content may be seen as a disingenuous outsourcing of your writing to a machine, leading to a lack of authenticity or originality in the content produced by AI. Others point to the potential for errors or inaccuracies in the output generated by AI.

All of this is true, there are risks involved in new technologies. It is also true that the paragraph above was written with ChatGPT. I want to emphasize it was written “with” ChatGPT, which is different from it being written “by” ChatGPT. Read the rest of this entry »

True story: I once asked directions from a man I met in Dublin.  I asked him how to get to a particular address in the city.  He told me, and I quote, “You can’t get there from here.”  For a moment, however brief, I thought all was lost.

Many of your clients feel the same way. They can’t travel because it costs too much.  They can’t travel because they don’t have passports. They can’t travel because they are afraid of terrorism, foreigners, all things German, and strange food. They need some new appliances. Really!

No, not really. In reality, they can’t travel because of you.  They don’t think they can get there from here.  Read the rest of this entry »

Hashtags are an essential, but sometimes misunderstood, tool for growing an Instagram following as they allow users to discover new content and increase the visibility of their own posts. Hashtags work by categorizing posts under specific topics, making them more discoverable to users interested in those topics. Instagram creators use hashtags to track trends and enhance search. Simply speaking, hashtags are words or phrases about a specific topic, with a hash (#) before it, e.g. #traveltuesday. Read the rest of this entry »

Slump? I ain’t in no slump… I just ain’t hitting. ~ Yogi Berra

I hope nobody told you the travel business was easy.

I’m just back from a travel conference in the great city of Dallas.  The travel professionals in attendance seemed upbeat about business prospects, affirming the general sentiment that pent-up demand for travel is taking hold of the general public. One agent, however, indicated things had not been going her way lately and everyone else’s enthusiasm was just making her feel worse. Her business was down and she didn’t know why.

We have all experienced a slump in our business activity.  Suddenly things grow quiet… too quiet.  The reasons for a slump can be purely individual and unpredictable, but down-turns in business can be reversed if you take appropriate measures. Immediate action is the key. The worst thing you can do is “wait and see”- a slump is psychologically tough to handle, but giving into depression is self-defeating and prolongs the misery.   Read the rest of this entry »

Habits are powerful factors in our lives. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily express our character produce our effectiveness or ineffectiveness. ~ Stephen R. Covey

As Stephen Covey indicates, habits are powerful forces, perhaps even more so than we suspect. Good habits we often perceive as difficult to form and bad habits impossible to break. Ironically, the reverse also appears to be true. Good habits seem as flimsy as the first excuse to disrupt a routine and bad habits arise before we notice their presence. Read the rest of this entry »

Slow travel is a grassroots approach that emphasizes sustainability, intentionality, and quality over speed and mass tourism. Slow travelers prioritize taking their time to get to know a place in its entirety – not just the main points of interest but also the culture, people, and everyday life. Unlike traditional mass tourism, slow travel emphasizes spending more time in each destination, experiencing local culture face-to-face. Rather than an effort to “tick off” as many places as possible, the slow traveler instead focuses on getting to know one place deeply Read the rest of this entry »

“New Year’s Day is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” ~ Mark Twain

New Year’s resolutions often are a topic of derision. We treat the annual ritual of making promises to ourselves as a joke, a light-hearted acknowledgement of our inability to keep a commitment.

Something about that sits poorly with me. Read the rest of this entry »

U.S. air travelers who have faced a tumultuous week of cancellations and delays due to poor weather conditions will have to wait a bit longer for the skies to clear. The situation is particularly difficult if they’re planning on taking a flight with Southwest Airlines.

Approximately 2,850 flights have been canceled for Tuesday, as reported by the flight tracking website FlightAware. Of those canceled flights, 2,500, or 88%, are operated by Southwest. Many passengers have been informed rebooking may be delayed for days.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced that it is conducting a review into the airline’s handling of its operations in light of its recent series of canceled flights, which has seen thousands of disgruntled passengers unable to make their desired journey. The FAA’s investigation follows complaints from customers and employees about how Southwest Airlines responded or failed to respond when bad weather forced them to cancel hundreds of its flights over the past week.

This latest incident marks yet another setback for an airline already struggling before the onset of this chaotic period caused by the turbulent winter weather patterns.  The latest incidents put further pressure on Southwest Airlines as more and more customers take to social media to express their dismay at the airline’s increasingly poor service standards. Customers are lashing out against what they perceive as sloppy responses from both frontline staff and executives in particular. There also seems to be a certain amount of confusion regarding how many passengers can be rebooked or provided refunds for their canceled flights; some people are reporting that they were told there were no available seats left on other flights operated by Southwest Airlines, while others said that no refund was offered despite having purchased travel insurance policies meant to protect them against such situations.

The FAA is currently taking all these complaints into account while attempting to figure out what exactly led to such extensive flight cancellations within such a short time frame, including whether or not Southwest Airlines made full use of any technology available in order to minimize disruption and inconvenience as much as possible for impacted passengers. All involved are hoping that whatever findings emerge from this review lead to solutions so as not only to prevent similar incidents from occurring again but also to help restore trust in the airline among customers.

Driving down a canopy-covered road in northern Florida yesterday, I spotted a sign at a Methodist church that indicated an “Alternative Christmas Market” was being held. The parking lot was filled with cars, and it looked like a good opportunity to pick up some interesting presents.  The very thought that I would actually have any shopping done prior to the absolute last minute was a source of peculiar pride. The word “alternative” suggested to me that I would be able to find some most unusual gifts, something never before seen under a Christmas tree by any of the people on my list this year.

Indeed.

As I walked through the doors of the church, I saw immediately that I had misunderstood the nature of an “alternative” Christmas.  Read the rest of this entry »