Travel Agent Professional February 2015 Issue 33
Be The Human App — By Cindy Bertram
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F
ebruary
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It’s 2015: How Loyal Are Your Existing Clients By Mitchell J. Schlesinger
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2015
President, MJS Consultants http://issuu.com/action/page?page=5
Birmingham Gateway to the Heart of England By Paull Tickner
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http://issuu.com/action/page?page=13
Be the Human App — Real Face, Real Person, Ambassador By Cindy Bertram Cindy's Inside Cruise & Travel Track, LLC
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http://issuu.com/action/page?page=13
In Memory of John Martinen By Sue Shapiro CTC, MCC Shapiro Travel Resources
February 2015 Issue 33
Cover: Photo courtesy of Crystal Cruises/Paragon Pixels
Ad Index
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Be The Human App —
Amadeus .......................................15
HostTravelAgency.com .................13
Auto Europe .................................IFC
TRAVELSAVERS...............................9
Britain Greatdays.............................3
Royal Caribbean Line....................BC
Travel Agent Professional
Travel Agent Professional February 2015 Issue 33
Joel M. Abels
Legend In the Travel Industry April 1927 to January 2007
Travel Agent Professional P.O. Box 120198 Staten Island, NY 10312 E-mail: info@travelagentprofessional.com Phone: 718.360.3153 Ann M. Hoek Publisher/Creative Design ann@travelagentprofessional.com Bonnie Walling Editor Bonnie@travelagentprofessional.com Alan Cohen Vice President Marketing Alan@travelagentprofessional.com
Meet Our Editorial Board Paull Tickner, Creator of Special Interest Britain ptickner@customgb.co.uk www.customgb.co.uk Cindy Bertram, Cindy’s Inside Cruise & Travel Track, LLC cindybert@att.net Mitchell J. Schlesinger President, MJS Consultants mjschlesinger@bellsouth.net Rusty Pickett, ECC Shellback Cruises www.shellbackcruises.com Les-Lee Roland Owner of The Package Deal Sherry Laskin, ACC Travel Writer/NACTA Webinar Moderator www.cruisemaven.com Sue Shapiro, President Shapiro Travel Resources sue.shapiro@gmail.com www.shapirotravelresources.com This online magazine is dedicated to the memory of Joel Abels, Travel Trade's editor and publisher. Joel and his life's work may be gone, but with your help it can live on.
Travel Agent Professional has its roots in Home Based Trade, the first magazine of its kind, started by Joel Abels in 2004. Joel and Lenore Abels ran Travel Trade for nearly half a century – it was started by her grandfather, John S. Lewis, and her father, Sidney Lewis, in 1929, and they took the publication over after her grandfather’s passing. Under Joel’s direction, the company grew to be one of the travel agent industry’s leading publications, reaching more than 45,000 agents throughout North America. It spawned a famous series of trade shows and three monthly magazines – Cruise Trade, Tour Trade and Home Based Trade. The Abels also garnered enormous respect – Joel received the Neal Award, called “the Pulitzer Prize of the business press,” for his hard-hitting editorials. On a personal note, after working with Joel for over a decade and staying with him until the end, I grew to truly care for and respect the man. He was like a second father to me. Joel was old school, he stood by his word and believed in his work. There will never be another. While nobody can replace this industry legend, we’re hoping that this new publication, which reunites the original Home Based Trade editorial board, will be able to carry on his passion for travel and those who sell it.
Ann M. Hoek The opinions expressed in these columns are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Travel Agent Professional.
February 2015
Issue No. 8 | February 12th 2014
W
elcome to a slightly different perspective on your old friend Britain. Since 1980, I’ve been helping travel counsellors to identify, develop and convert untapped sources of new business into imaginative, high yield, customised groups, both large and small. I’m now applying this to tailor made tours for individuals and families who are flying or cruising in and out of the UK.
Over the period, I’ve gained a great deal of experience, knowledge and many grass root connections who add the bubble, fizz and pleasant surprises to each tailor made tour. Take a leisurely look at the ‘magnificent seven’ listed below and arm yourself with a pen and a piece of paper so that you can note down the contacts you’ll have for most of the niche markets mentioned. Prioritise them and then email me your thoughts on how you might like to proceed.
Paull Tickner Paull Tickner and Associates Ltd
Girls Getaways London only, London and Batthh, London and tthhe Cotswolds are three options for you to consider. For Quilters, there are programmes for tthhe tthhree major Quilt Shows in England and ttw wo more in Scotland. If Embroidery and Needlework is your niche, my Liverpool (yes Liverpool) and London tour ticks all the boxes. For lady golfers, I can also supply an interesting Cotswold-based Golf, Gardens and Antiques tour that finishes with an international match against a UK team.
Pre and Post Cruise Extensions Let’s talk about London based customised pre and post crruuise extensions that meet your clients time frame, interests and budget. For customers tthhat have been there many times before, find out where they’d really like to go before or after their crruuise and tthhen put my knowledge through its paces.
Family Travel Speed boat rides up tthhe River Thames, side trips to see tthhe making of Harry Potter, living history experiences at our historic castles and palaces, entertaining actor led tours of tthhe Theatre Royal and a performance of Mathilda, family cycle rides through the Royal Parks, a Doctor Who Experience and a ffllight on the London Eye. With tthheir accommodation included, I can customise these and other exciting interactive encounters into a memorable family trip to London.
Up an English Garden Path For Orchid, Herb, Rose and otthher specialist societies, Master Gardeners, Friends of Botanic Gardens/Arboreta and even Flower Arrangers, I can provide a FebrruuarySeptember collection of memorable, value added tours. With demand always outstripping tthhe hotel supply, now is tthhe time to be considering a 2015 Chelsea Flower Show tour (19tthh-23rd May). Travel Agent Professional
4 It’s 2015: M i t c h e l l
As 2015 begins, the travel industry has never offered more
J .
opportunities to visit destinations,
S c h l e s i n g e r
mainstream and intimate, around the world and more ways to experience these destinations. And this represents an extraordinary opportunity for travel sellers who can By Mitchell J. Schlesinger President, MJS Consultants
offer a world of options to existing clients in their databases ... and their family and friends.
But wait...have you engaged your client’s loyalty? Do you have them “working” for you to generate referral business? If the honest answer to both questions is “No” or “Not as much as I should”, then you are potentially losing tens of thousands in commissions now and more importantly into the future. The most critical aspect in the business — customer dynamic is keeping a customers loyalty long term after their initial purchase. And this is realistically more important in the travel selling business than perhaps any other industry. Why? Consumers make other big ticket purchases at extended intervals. House; decades. Car, furniture, appliances; years & years. But Americans take vacations virtually every year. They may vary in size, scope and expense, but Americans regard taking a vacation as an annual entitlement. This means travel sellers MUST insure that they are retaining the loyalty of clients in order to retain repeat travel and stimulate referral business. The better the job travel sellers do, it reduces the expenses to generate brand new clients. The key to managing the customer relationship is implementing the 3 Rs.
February 2015
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How Loyal Are Your Existing Clients RECOGNITION First and foremost is connecting and engaging with existing clients. They must feel that you value their business. Start with a loyalty club. Americans love to feel like special members of an exclusive club. And look no further than airline and hotel programs for loyalty engagement. Engage your clients with different types of communication. Send a general monthly E-newsletter to all clients in the database with new travel trends, special values, etc. But if you keep in depth records of client travel experiences, you can create separate communications to groupings of clients who purchase similar types of travel, purchase expenditures, lengths, etc. Don’t repeatedly send communications to clients who will never purchase certain types of travel. Engage all clients to an interactive area of your website or separate Instagram page where they can post recaps of trips, photos and mentions of your travel team. These type of testimonials provide invaluable endorsement of your agency.
REFERRALS & REWARDS As critical part of loyalty engagement is to provide rewards for repeat travel and referring family and friends to your agency. Rewards must be tangible and provide incentive for action. One of the best ways to construct the reward program is based on ticket purchase. It is logical to scale rewards and offer larger rewards as ticket prices escalate. We have addressed this for years and years. Clients must be viewed as investment annuities that generate interest income as years go by. It is vital you keep clients engaged throughout their travel lifetimes so that you reap the benefit of the “annuity income”. This is especially critical because as clients age, they travel longer and spend more. And with so many new and different destination and travel opportunities to offer, if you don’t keep clients engaged they will purchase travel from someone else. Welcome to 2015, have a happy and prosperous new year and make sure that one of your primary resolutions is to maximize the loyalty of your clients.
Travel Agent Professional
6
Birmingham Gateway to the
P a u l l
Heart of England
T i c k n e r
Until recently, travel planners have often thought that London Heathrow and Gatwick are the only routes into England. With Icelandair offering flights from 11 North American cities via Reykjavik and American Airlines starting regular service into Birmingham Airport from New York in May, the Cotswolds and Shakespeare’s England, have suddenly become a whole lot closer. Airside kerbside at BHX takes just over 30 minutes and 45 minutes later you can be checking into your hotel in Chipping Campden before strolling along its ancient High Street for lunch at the 8 Bells www.eightbellsinn.co.uk a traditional 17th century Cotswolds Inn, before a leisurely stroll around the internationally renowned Arts and Crafts
By Paull Tickner
garden
at
Hidcote
Manor
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hidcote/ To me this makes a much better start to a UK visit especially for those looking for a really user friendly alternative to London. Other customised touring options include:
Pub Tours
With a bit of careful planning (and some local knowledge) it’s possible to create a 4 night Cotswolds based tour where husbands can enjoy days filled with visits to breweries, micro breweries and ancient coaching inns while their wives enjoy a separate itinerary that includes ceramic studios, silk mills, an antique auction, discovering the Arts and Crafts Movement, privately owned gardens and a light hearted lesson in the correct serving of English Afternoon Tea. With dinners in award winning gastro pubs and a final evening at the famous Pudding Club, finish off with 2-3 nights in London.
Paull Tickner has been designing and operating niche travel programmes for the UK and Ireland for over 30 years. For more information E-mail Paull at ptickner@customgb.co.uk
February 2015
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Stop and Smell the Roses
If the Chelsea or the Hampton Court Flower Shows are on your agenda, slip into England through the Birmingham gateway and discover a number of gardens that have won the fiercely contested Christies/Historic Houses Association Garden of the Year award. Throw in a game of croquet, a couple of pub lunches, an English Afternoon Tea and some free time for shopping, and with your jet lag parked in the English countryside head for London for a day at the garden show of your choice and a West End Show.
Capability Brown Celebrations
2016 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown who changed the face of eighteenth century England by designing country estates and mansions, moving hills, making flowing lakes and serpentine rivers and creating a magical world of green. As many of your contacts will have read about Britain’s most famous Master Gardener in their garden magazines talk to them about a tailor made UK tour. With a number of his finest achievements in and around the Cotswolds, it makes good sense to use BHX gateway.
Capitalise on the Shakespeare Anniversaries
BHX to Stratford upon Avon take less than half an hour which could be great news to many of the 63 Shakespeare Festivals that take place annually in America. If you wonder where they are, check out (continued on page 6)
Travel Agent Professional
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www.dmoz.org/Top/Arts/Performing_Arts/Theatre/Shakespeare/Festivals/United_States Replace the word United States with Canada and you’ll find 7 more to have a go at. Each festival is aware that last year was the 450th anniversary of the Bard’s birth and they’ll already know that 2016 is the 400th anniversary of his death. Many of you reading this will be regular theatre goers and if one of the listed festivals is on your doorstep, you might even go to that as well. Why not harness the potential by offering the festival a customised fund raiser to London and Stratford that will NOT be in any tour operator’s brochures.
In the Footsteps of King Richard III
As an anglophile, you may have read that after more than 500 years of speculation, the remains of King Richard III were discovered in Leicester in 2012 and they will be re-interred at Leicester Cathedral in March 2015. If you fly into Birmingham, you can now follow a trail to Leicester, York and Stratford upon Avon that tells the fascinating story of King Richard III and the downfall of the last Plantagenet King of England.
February 2015
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Travel Agent Professional
10 Be the Human App — C i n d y
Mobile apps
seem to have taken over the world.
B e r t r a m
How many times have we heard a colleague or friend say, “Oh, did you know there’s a mobile app for that?” Yes, I use mobile apps, but not for everything, nor all the time. It’s usually for a quick answer and solution. When it comes to the important things, I want to deal with a real human being, and a company with a “face” that fits my needs. In travel, we provide more than just a “quick answer.” With our diverse expertise, we need to see ourselves as being the “Human App.”
By Cindy Bertram Cindy's Inside Cruise & Travel Track, LLC
The Brand Name Face Brand names stick in our brains, because they tend to bring credibility, but sometimes the brand is just name recognition. When doing my homework to buy a new computer, I wanted to stick with one brand, because I’ve purchased their computers before. They had a “face.” The company’s “face” changed a bit after I purchased my computer. I was given a 30 day free trial of an antivirus software program. Then I either had to purchase it, or use another program. After being placed on hold for 35 minutes with this computer company, and being told periodically that I could also go online, do research and make a purchase? I was finally connected to a sales person who tried to push a different antivirus program instead of the one they had offered me for the free 30 day trial. When I questioned why? I was told this one was a better program, and the sales person downplayed the one that had been included with the 30 day free trial. It didn’t leave me with a good impression of that company’s “face.” I didn’t buy the other anti-virus program the sales person tried to push on me. Instead, I bought and installed a different one.
February 2015
11
Real Face, Real Person, Ambassador Being the “Face,” Brand Ambassador and Human App
As travel professionals we need to focus on our “face.” We don’t try to “shove a product” down a potential buyer’s throat or make them walk away thinking, “Why did we buy that?” Instead, as that “human app” we work to find the right fits for our clients with options. We don’t promote a cruise package if the clients really prefer to do a land based exotic trip. We also have to view ourselves as being brand ambassadors. Keeping in touch, being responsive to our existing clients and potential ones, understanding their needs, along with being genuine are traits of a good brand ambassador.
Brand Ambassador – Edie Rodriguez, President & COO, Crystal Cruises In the fall of 2013, Edie Rodriguez became President and COO of
Crystal Cruises. She’s had an extremely successful career, is gracious with her time, elegant, genuine, and responsive. After taking on this new role, Edie Rodriguez mentioned she was hired, in part, to be the public face of Crystal Cruises and a brand ambassador of sorts. When asked what it takes to be a good brand ambassador today, Edie provided more insights. Edie noted, “It takes experience in the travel and cruise industry to be a great brand ambassador. I have more than 30 years of executive leadership in global and luxury travel, technology, sales and marketing, which clearly was required as one of the foundations to be the President of Crystal Cruises and concurrently a great brand ambassador. It also helps to be passionate about luxury and travel, as Crystal is the world’s most luxurious cruise line.” She further explains, ‘Being a good brand ambassador also takes being authentic. You really need to love and be passionate about your brand, and the experience the brand delivers. I (continued on page 6)
Travel Agent Professional
12 love Crystal so much that I take about four weeks of my personal vacation a year on Crystal in addition to when I am required to be on board for business. When you are passionate about what you are doing it doesn’t feel like work at all. I am as passionate today about travel and my career as I was 34 years ago when I started. I always say that life becomes work and work becomes life in this 24/7 cycle we live in. So
Not a Mobile App – We’re “The Human App”
being authentically passionate about what you represent is key to being a good ambassador today.” As far as ideas for travel professionals, Edie mentions, “My insights and suggestions for travel professionals is to always
When I talk to people, I make sure that I don’t sound like an automatic answer-
be sure to first ask the right sets of questions to a potential traveler so he or she can then be empowered to offer the
ing machine. Smiling on the phone while
right experience for that particular trip for that individual client. Also, I urge travel professionals to experience the brands they are selling. You can be the greatest sales person in the world but you will sell differently, and dare I say better, if you have actually experienced what you are selling. You
talking to someone does make a difference. It conveys that “Human App”
will also then learn what not to sell once you understand the traveler’s needs as well.”
More Thoughts on being the “Face”
When it comes to being the “face” of your travel business,
mindset. And that’s just a start. Being accessible, authentic, reachable, and
Edie shares some key points. She explains, “I think it takes an individual that is willing to be “out there” - meaning take
handling more complicated, intricate
phone calls; emails; be in tune and be in touch and responsive.” Edie mentions, “For my style of management it does not work being in an ‘ivory tower’ in my humble opinion. I am an
areas for our clients are all part of being that “Human App.” What we do, how
extrovert and very comfortable talking to anyone at any time. The fact that I get to talk about the things I am passionate about makes it all the more easier. The best advice I can give is be sure you are touching all aspects of communications and that does mean social media, networking, charities, etc. If
we do it, and providing a human touch is where we still excel and set ourselves
these activities don’t fit your style, then find someone on your team who is interested and have them champion your
apart. We are the “Human App.”
brand for you.”
February 2015
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In Memory of John Martinen
John Martinen, formerly President and CEO of Globus T o u rs , d ie d in N e w Y o rk Ci ty o n Fe br u ar y 4, 2015. His many friends and colleagues will sorely miss him. Despite graduating from NYU Law School, John came to prefer the travel industry to the law. Spotting a trend long before others, he first worked for the iconic Grace Line sailing the world. Later he joined Globus and Cosmos in NYC and went on to become Executive VP and then President and CEO until his departure in 1998. Subsequently he formed his own company and was involved in selling travel insurance which he had originally introduced to the industry. He was especially proud of the many honors he received and the executive positions held by him in the travel industry such as: Tour Operator of the Year (Travel Agent Magazine), one of the 25 Top Travel Executives of 1996 (Tour & Travel News), Who’s Who in America, Chairman, AST A Tou r Operator Program, Board of Directors UST OA, member of the Board NY SKAL and many more. By Sue Shapiro CTC, MCC President
A memorial is being arranged in several cities and will
Shapiro Travel Resources
be announced soon. Donations can be made at the
www.shapirotravelresources.com
memorial page as follows: www.jammemorial.com
February 2015
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