Blueprint for Travel

Names: Rob Belles and Lynn Belles

Agency Name and Location: Belles World Travel-Lynn and Rob Belles, Cruises Inc., Rockford, Illinois.

Host Agency: Cruises Inc.

Our Other Career: Our other career is architecture and design.

Why We Chose a Travel Career: My spouse, Lynn, and I have been in the architecture industry since 1992. About three years ago we were looking for a sideline to fill downtime in the winter. We wanted to use our skill set to help people plan something fun and that would [help us] transition to work less as architects. We had been on 20 cruises on nine lines.

Why We Chose Our Host/Franchise Network: We knew of the World Travel Holdings family because we had purchased our last two cruises from a CruiseOne agent. We selected the Cruises Inc. model, as it fit our wish to have a part-time supplemental business. Plus, we have the option growing into a CruiseOne or Dream Vacations franchise.

Our Biggest Challenge Starting Out: Finding our niche and learning how to say no. Not every customer is a good fit, even if you need and want customers. Also, learning not to sell on price, but to sell on value!

How We Solved It: We made a decision followed by a commitment that we would sell only cruises. Cruising is what we love and are experts at.

What We Like Best About the Travel Business: Helping people realize they have the means to travel to special places, especially when they thought they didn’t.

What We Hate About It: Some days we feel more like accountants or data-entry clerks, spending much time on very detailed and basic bookkeeping and housekeeping tasks.

How Our Other Career Helped Us Run Our Travel Business: Architecture is about planning a building experience for others. We must understand what they need the building to do for them, while respecting their budget and schedule.

As agents, we also have to get inside the travelers’ heads and learn where they want to go and why.

Why We Love What We Do: We believe that through helping people travel for the purpose of experiencing the architecture and cultures of the world, we all gain a better understanding of our similarities and differences.