PHOTO: Joe Stachnik, president of Mayflower Tours and Phil Cappelli, president of Insight Vacations

It’s tough out there. The business climate of the 21st-century is highly competitive, and the skills and technologies of your competitors are highly developed. Some look upon business as war. And you don’t go to war without a plan.

When Did Business Get So Tough?

The great disintermediation in the mid-1990s, when airlines cut commissions to travel agents, changed the game fundamentally, making it much more difficult for travel agents to function profitably.

The disintermediation of travel agents did not, as many feared, kill the retail travel industry, but it did kill many individual businesses. It was a painful weeding out process and the agencies that survive today have had to depend on much sharper business people than was required in the good old days. Travel agents today, despite the fact that they are in the most fun industry in the world, have to have sharply honed business practices to survive.

The Map to Success

For one who is about to take a journey to greater profitability, it is wise to get a map. How do you plan to get from where you are to where you want to be? One good way for a retailer to learn new skills and tricks of the trade is to consult with tour operators and vacation packagers.

Tour operators have a stake in supporting retailers because they need them for their own survival. They are the agent’s natural allies. They are also good mentors for retailers because they can share the benefit of their experience and their overview of the industry.

Most tour operators prefer to plug into the travel agent distribution system and benefiting from the more personal connections of travel agents rather than maintaining a call center and taking on the task of marketing directly to the much wider consumer public. Marketing through the travel agent distribution center is a more efficient use of resources. Therefore tour operators like to invest in educating travel agents to be more effective business people.

Tour Operator - Supported Marketing Plans

Most tour operators maintain field sales staffs, business development managers whose job it is to help retailers develop into strong partners for the wholesalers. They don’t merely drop in for a sales call to show you the newest products and trends. One of the main functions of the business development managers is to help travel agents create strong business and marketing plans.

Insight Vacations, for example, has distilled its 30 years of experience selling tours into a learning program for agents called Agent Marketing Plan 1.0 (AMP1.0 ), a six-step approach to creating a marketing plan.

The first step, according to Insight, is to decide between a short-term plan covering the next six months, or a longer-term plan for six to 12 months ahead. Phil Cappelli, Insight’s president, says, “If you were looking at selling European escorted tours, then the booking season is highest January through March, with customers planning September through December. However, if it’s to capture customers with tactical offers, then January through April is the prime time.”

A short-term plan might take advantage of a special offer of savings for booking and paying in full by a certain date. “An agent would be served well by having postcard and telemarketing campaigns in their plan over the next 45 days to take advantage of this and other short-term offers quickly,” says Cappelli.

Focus Your Buying Power

The second step of the Insight plan is to carefully choose your suppliers. This choice, according to Insight, is based on the following questions: “Who are my long-term partners? Who protects and partners with the trade? Which products do I know well and can recommend confidently? Who has co-op money to help market?”

There are significant advantages in narrowing the list of suppliers as much possible and still have access to the breadth of product you need. The narrower the list, the more you can focus your buying power.

Your choice of suppliers also depends on what kind of product you want to sell, and that comes back to fundamental decisions about what kind of agent you want to be, what special niche you want to stake out in the marketplace. There is strength in specialization, says Dan Austin, president of Austin Adventures. “The key is to not try to be all things to all people,” he says, “but to specialize in a niche within the niche and then become the expert. Aligning one’s expertise with personal passions is a step in the right direction. If you are an avid cyclist, consider cycle tours. If you’re a hiker, try hiking or trekking tours, and so on. Then look for the industry leaders in that niche. People want to do business with people they trust and see as friends first and then as experts a close second. Time invested getting to know your suppliers is every bit as important as getting to know your customers.”

Your chosen specialty should be a meeting point between your clientele’s preferences and your own passions. Jim Tedesco, director of marketing for GOGO Vacations, says, “My advice would be to make sure your plan recognizes who you are and who you aspire to be. If you consider yourself extremely knowledgeable in Mexico product, then your plan should focus a lot on growing that business and using that knowledge as leverage in the marketplace. If you aspire to be a more developed agent with knowledge in multiple destinations, then you need to ensure your business plans include outlets for training and education in those areas. A marketing plan is not about one big idea, it’s about many smaller ideas that will yield one big result. The plan should have a vision and mission statement showing where their business is going and why it’s going in that direction. It should also have some strategic goals and then some strategic tactics on how they plan on achieving those goals.”

John Stachnik, president of Mayflower Tours, says, “If you had to go to the doctor would you prefer a family practice doctor, or one who specializes in what ails you? Just as you want a medical specialist for special ailments, so too do travelers want to work with someone who is an expert in the areas they wish to experience. Home-based agents don’t have the time or the resources to be all things to all people. They should choose an intelligent list of destinations and/or modes of travel in which to be an expert. It is challenging to walk away from business because you don’t know enough about the area. Believe me, you might get them to travel with you once — you may even pull it off — but the odds are stacked against that happening. Be known for what you are — a highly skilled and experienced counselor ready to take your clients to places that will create fond lasting memories for them.”

Implementing the Plan

The third step in Insight’s formula is to choose an appropriate offer to use as a marketing vehicle. Insight says the choice should be “robust, relevant and realistic.” “Robust” means that it offers the client a lot of value. A $25 Target gift card might not be hefty enough to sell a $10,000 double booking of a tour, but a free airport transfer might provide the needed extra incentive to close the sale. “Relevant” means something the client can really use and something that resonates with a travel purchase. “Realistic” means available and easy to understand.

Step four is to choose a marketing venue, such as telemarketing, direct mail or email blasts. According to Emma Beckerle, Insight’s marketing manager, “We have found that direct mail and e-marketing produce the best results, with direct marketing having the better results of the two.” Beckerle says it is vital to track and measure results. “How many calls did I get? How many clients did I book? This information is key to getting a higher co-op promise in the future from your supplier partners.”

Step five in Insight’s plan is to write down a month-by-month record of your goals and activities, such as promotional nights, sending blasts and so forth.

The last step is to select your target clients. Select clients who have shown by their previous travels that they may be a good prospect for the deal you are promoting. Elayne Raksnys, Insight’s director of sales, says, “If you were sending a direct-mail postcard promoting an Insight tour of Italy, you might want to send the card to past Mediterranean cruisers, past travelers to South America and Asia, and past tour-takers to Europe who did not travel to Italy.” Clients appreciate the individual attention that shows you know who they are. Even if they don’t take the offer, it reminds them of you and flatters them that you are paying attention to their individual preferences.