You Don't Have to Go It Alone!

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As travel advisors, we are all fortunate to be in an industry that allows us to explore the globe. Traveling is one of the best parts of our work. Experiencing new destinations and properties helps us build expertise that allows us to better guide our clients.

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But the world is simply too big to know every corner. For that reason and so many others, collaboration is key. Working together allows us not only to help one another, but also to grow our knowledge and ultimately our business.

As profiled in a recent issue of Harvard Business Review (HBR), the Dubai Airports Company recently embarked on a campaign to reinforce the service culture throughout their 3,400-employee strong organization, engaging their vendors and partners as well, to reinvent the customer experience from top to bottom.

Build Relations With Peers
This idea couldn’t be more applicable to the travel business, where knowledge is power and power is what ultimately drives sales. Begin by building relationships with your fellow advisors. At the same time, remember that the company you keep is important, because the travel advisors you surround yourself with are valuable resources that can help you better service your clients. Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up in thinking that colleagues are competition, but this notion is detrimental to everyone involved.

Getting on the same page with suppliers is equally important, since these are the folks who will be taking care of your clients while they are traveling. I was recently out to dinner with a client staying at The Mark Hotel, who expressed some disappointment that he awoke too late for the complimentary Virtuoso breakfast.

I fired off a friendly email to Rebecca Soloff, the hotel’s director of sales, expressing how much the client was enjoying the hotel, but also saying he was disappointed that he missed the breakfast. In turn, she arranged to have a bottle of champagne placed in the client’s room before he returned from our dinner. It’s those small touches that ultimately make a big difference, and having industry partners willing to back you up can help you convert a new client into a lifetime client.

Conferences and tradeshows provide some of the best venues to foster relationships. Nowadays, there’s a conference for every niche. One of our agents recently attended Emotions, a Buenos Aires event devoted to nontraditional, bespoke experiences. LE Miami, to take place in June, bills itself as a conference dedicated to “following the shift in contemporary travel.”

In January, I was an advisor at the Young Travel Professionals TravelFutureLab event, a daylong summit dedicated to identifying, attracting and serving the incoming generation of discerning clients. These events are prime opportunities to meet and network with others who run in similar circles. There is so much innovation happening in the travel industry right now, and by rubbing elbows with those at the crest of the wave, we all have the opportunity to grow personally and professionally.

Show Your Appreciation
On the other hand, support isn’t just a one-way street. It’s equally important to show suppliers appreciation for their help. I’ve been to Australia a handful of times and I love the country immensely. We recently hosted the Luxury Lodges of Australia, a marketing partnership consisting of 18 independently-owned lodges, in my building’s screening room.

We gathered both in-house agents and our New York-based independent contractors for the presentation, which allowed us to introduce the portfolio in a cohesive, interactive way that couldn’t be easily replicated by a webinar. Our agents walked away with valuable new information, and our partners were finally able to match names with faces.

We are here to serve our clients. They see value in our knowledge and they trust that we will be able to guide them toward an experience that will make them happy. While each of us has a great wealth of personal knowledge, drawing on the knowledge of others is equally important.

Henry Ford once said: “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” Simply put, our relationships with others can take us much further than we can go on our own, and putting time into building these relationships is an investment that will pay off in innumerable ways.