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Become a Home Based Travel Agent
An Interview with Community Member
I have been in the travel Business for almost on 10 years now. Sharon, my wife and partner, has been in the travel business for 20 years. Before that, I owned a couple of entrepreneurial businesses, actually one of my partners was the artist that did the lion sculpture in front of the MGM Grand in Vegas. Before that I was in the corporate world, My last position was Vice President of Sales for a software and data company until we were bought out by Dunn & Bradstreet and they wanted to move me from Chicago to New Your City. I have been in sales and marketing virtually my whole career. My first position out of school was with the old Olivetti Corporation What motivated you to get into the travel business? Sharon, at the time I got involved, had been involved with the travel business about 15 years and was the manager of a bricks and mortar agency. I had just come off my latest business venture and was looking for something else to get involved with. It was at the time that travel agencies were becoming more involved with the Internet. I thought, with her knowledge of travel and my knowledge of computers and the Internet, it was a perfect fit for us to put our heads together and start a travel agency that used the Internet to advertise and generate leads but still provide the same level of personal service to the client as if they were sitting across from us at our desk. We still operate under this philosophy today. We do not have prices or a booking engine on our website because we want to make sure we interact with every potential client to develop that relationship and insure what the potential client ends up purchasing fits the criteria they are looking for. no matter how technology driven this business gets, It is all about relationship building, client satisfaction, and creating a repeat client that provides us with referrals. We have accomplished that and are growing by leaps and bounds. You specialize in selling all inclusive, what led you to make that decision? Because I had been in the data processing industry and had seen it go through a period where the companies that survived were the ones that specialized in a certain market segment or product line. I felt that because of the Internet and the amount of information that was going to be made available to the clients that we had to specialize in a certain area, demographic or product, so when a client called us we knew more about the product they were looking for than they did and could use our extensive specialized knowledge base and experience to act as an effective consultant for the client. We felt that the day of a travel agent trying to provide every travel product to every client was going to be detrimental to their ultimate success. It has paid off for us at a level that we did not even expect. An example of this type of thinking is, I had a potential client this morning that called and after speaking with him for a while, explaining what we do, how we operate, and understanding what the client was looking for, I went on-line with him to a resort website that I felt would fit what they were looking for and was in their budget. I asked him, is this the type of resort your were thinking about? His comment was you hit it out of the park with this one. He went on to tell me he had contacted 3 other travel agents who all either told him they would have to do extensive research to get him something or they tried to sell him whatever special was being offered to his destination at that time without even asking him what he was looking for. Unfortunately for them, he had fired all 3. We selected Up Scale All Inclusive resorts because, during our travels we had stayed at a number of them and loved both the resorts and the all inclusive concept. We also saw that all inclusive resorts were increasing their quality by leaps and bounds. We learned that it was not your grandfather's all inclusive resort any more. We subscribe to the concept, sell what you know and love. If you don't know anything about or like the product you sell, it will come across that way to your potential clients. You participate in the community almost daily and share your expertise freely. What’s in it for you? That is funny, I get that question a lot. Why would you want to share your information with your competition? It is this kind of thinking that, in my opinion, holds this industry back and hinders it from becoming a strong cohesive industry. As we have seen with some of the Multi-level marketing companies touting that anyone can become a travel agent, the lack of product, business, and industry knowledge really hurts the reputation of the whole industry. We need to share our knowledge and expertise as much as we can with as many agents as possible to insure that we, as an industry grow in knowledge, professionalism, and ethics or at some point we will become irrelevant as an industry. Promoting and educating the industry is, in my opinion, as important as promoting and educating ourselves. I , again, go back to my data processing days. The heads of all the large computer and software companies, although strong competitors, always had regular meetings together to discuss what needed to be done to promote the industry as a whole. Being involved with an industry that is not knowledgeable or that does not have a great reputation with the public is detrimental to all of us. It is all our responsibilities to insure that we, as an industry, present the most professional, knowledgeable, and ethical front for the public. The only way we can do that is to share information and help each other. If we do this on a regular basis we will appear as a very professional industry and there will be more than enough business for everyone. As one of the leading members of the Travel Professional Community, do you have any advice on how agents can maximize the benefits they may obtain from the community? When asking for help or advice on the community please do as much qualifying or homework concerning the question or topic that you can. It can get very frustrating when you want to answer and help someone who has a request on the board and they ask a question like, "My client wants to go to a resort in the Caribbean, can you give me some recommendations?" What will happen is you will get very few agents responding to your request since you are basically asking the board to do your job for you. The purpose of the board, in my opinion, is not to have the board do your research and your job for you but, to ask questions or offer topics that either educate the other agents or that help guide you in the right direction with your research. Show in your questions that you have at least qualified the client and done some research on the topic you are asking about if only basic research. I feel the board is for people to ask specific questions, educate other agents or ask for some help but, not have the people of the board do all the work for you. If you do the above you will find you will get more and better directed responses to your topics. I also have found that if you read topics that may not pertain to your area of specialization you can learn some things. We do very few cruises but I have learned so much about cruises just by reading the topics and responses on the board. A good question on the board would be, "I have a client with his wife who wants to travel for a week in July. They have a budget of $4,000.00 and are trying to decide between Mexico and Jamaica. They would like an adult only all inclusive. They want to be able to take some off-site tours and the beach is important to them. My research has narrowed it down to these 2 resorts in Mexico and these 2 resorts in Jamaica. Can I get feedback on which of these resorts you think would fit my clients needs the best." This shows that some research has been done and they are asking for specific help. This type of question will get a lot of responses. The other thing that would help everyone, and someone mentioned it on the board already. That is when someone posts a topic, stick with that topic in your responses. I see so many posts that by the time there are 4 or 5 responses the continuing responses have nothing do to with the original topic. If something is important but not directly related to that topic, start a new topic. I do have to say that I have been guilty of this a couple of times. I try to watch myself. There is no such thing as a stupid question but just make sure you have tried to find an answer at least done some basic research on your topic before asking for help. As you move forward, do you have any future goals or a “bucket list” of things you have yet to accomplish? That is a tough one because I am so focused on work, probably too focused on work. As far as work goals, I want to hit $5,000,000.00 in sales. We have surpassed $3,000,000.00 already. I really do want to do more to help educating new agents in this industry, they are this industries future. It is so important that we all work toward increasing the knowledge base and professionalism of every agent in the industry. I would like to add 1 more good IC to the 3 we currently have. What slows me down is that I am very picky who we add. We are not in the business of just contracting with as many ICs as we can. We want a few that can be very productive. It is hard for us because we are so specialized and we stress sales ability as much as product knowledge. I constantly want to increase my business knowledge and keep up with this ever changing industry. Personally, Sharon and I would love to take a European River Cruise, visit the Amalfi Coast of Italy, and visit the Amazon. I also want to stop the need to answer the phone when it rings at 3:00 AM. On top of all that I do want to, at least semi retire someday. What changes do you see coming in the travel industry? I see a continuing increase in the use of technology in the travel industry from an agent, supplier, and the public perspective. It will be critical in this industry to keep up with the technology changes and advances and use the appropriate ones to increase and build your business. I see a change happening with the consumer side of things. Because of the amount of information available to them it gives them greater knowledge but it also, because of the shear amount of information available, confuses them. This offers a good knowledgeable agent an opportunity of developing a great client by provide an additional service of helping them sort through the mind numbing amount of information available. I see, due to consumer changes, changes in the supplier and distribution chains way of thinking and doing business. I think this is necessary, especially with the wholesale tour companies. If they don't they will struggle to keep succeeding. Look at price matching. Because of lack of price parity they have instituted price matching. Although grateful to them for doing this, in my opinion, it is nothing more than putting a band aid on the actual problem, price parity. I see agents who don't specialize on some level, product, demographic, or vacation experience, seeing decreasing success in this industry and becoming increasingly frustrated. I have said it for 10 years and will continue to say it, specialization is the key to future success in this industry. I see a growing problem in the fact that so many new people attempt to get into the travel industry without any basic travel, sales, or business education or the type of mentoring that took place in bricks and mortar agencies. A number of years ago a new agent was not hired by a bricks and mortar agency unless they had some basic travel related training and even then spent at least the first 6 months doing nothing but filing brochures or observing experienced agents conduct business with clients before taking on clients of their own. The homebased environment does not lend itself to this type of education and mentoring so it is up to the individual agent to gain this themselves and it is very hard to do this. The exciting thing I see is that as this industry constantly changes it opens up new opportunities for knowledgeable, hard working, forward thinking agents. What advice would you share with agents? Specialize, Specialize, Specialize. Understand that sales ability is as important as product knowledge in today's travel industry. Take time to understand and participate in business training. You are, after all running a business. Develop an honest business plan for your business and use it as a working document that is updated frequently and followed. There are a number of classes and books to help you develop a business plan. A lot of people do not like to develop a business plan because they are afraid of what it will show them. When you start a business make sure you have enough capital to support the business until it is self supporting. You need capital for day to day operations, marketing and incidental expenses. 80% of all small business fail in the first 2 years due to, primarily, undercapitalization. Attend travel trade shows. They are an economical way to gain a great base of education, meet suppliers, and share ideas and thoughts with other agents. They help boost moral because you will find, interacting with other agents, that you are not alone in some of the issues you deal with on a daily basis. Have fun with what you are doing. If you are not having fun, maybe it is not worth doing. To be a great travel agent you have to love business, sales, the day to day tasks you have to perform to sell travel and most of all building relationships with clients, suppliers, and other agents. Finally, I understand that you will be speaking again at the upcoming “Home Based Travel Show” in Ft. Lauderdale this November. What are you going to speak about and how can agents arrange to attend your seminar? Yes, I am conducting a session at the upcoming "Home Based Travel Show" in Ft. Lauderdale in Nov. I will be covering "Qualifying and educating potential clients". These are 2 of the most critical steps in the "selling process" or as Stuart Cohen calls it "the buying process". It will be an in-depth look at how to properly qualify and educate potential clients. All you need to do is register for the Travel Weekly Home Based Travel Show in Ft. Lauderdale. The schedule is out. You don't need to pre-register for the session but I would advise planning your schedule ahead of time. This is one of the best shows out there. It is put on by Travel Weekly, one of the largest industry publications and they strive to make each session very educational rather than just a platform for the presenter to sell something. In addition to the session, they will have guest industry speakers, continuing education classes, and ship inspections. A great time will be had by all. Hope to see and meet you there
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