HERE’S WHAT TO DO WHEN SPLAT HITS THE FAN… 1. Look for all media coverage online and where you can post a POSITIVE comment to undercut the negative vibes. This gives you a voice AND media coverage too. Use CNN and FOX etc., for all you are worth to sell MORE cruises! 2. Contact your local TV / Radio station and invite yourself on a local talk show… then SELL cruising as a #1 choice. 3. Write to your blog, post comments to your social media outlets, channels and even better if you can record a video from your agency with the entire agency team shouting “Twenty million people cruised each year…” post it on YouTube and watch it go viral. 4. Your role here is to support cruising as a fantastic vacation choice, align yourself with selling cruises, make sure you hold the newsmakers / newsfakers accountable for sensationalising the situation and call them out for their coverage and post coverage affect on small business.. i.e. travel agents. 5. Confirm that all “we” need is an update on the situation that’s factual and well presented. 6. Minimize damage to your agency by putting into place a DRP – Disaster Recovery Plan for when these events happen / repeat. Initiate a risk management program so that everyone on the team knows what to do such as: advising soon-to-cruise clients that all is well, switching clients who want out of their cruise holiday to a land based or river cruise vacation.
©2013 Steve Crowhurst, SMP Training Co. for Selling Travel
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Be first out with the t-shirt!
Start working on your disaster recovery / risk management plans now. This will not be the last “disaster” to hit our industry. The industry is at the mercy of all things mechanical, climatic, political, terror based… you name it, when it goes bad, the travel industry suffers and the mass media will unwittingly perpetuate it – which is why YOU MUST OWN THE NEWS and be the news for your clients.
©2013 Steve Crowhurst, SMP Training Co. for Selling Travel
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