Richard Turen
There has always been one primary way to operate in the travel business. It involves selling travel. When people go places, you want them to think about you, to contact you, to book with you.
The gurus tell us to hand out business cards to everyone. I once met a travel agent from New Orleans who told me she stopped in the middle of Jackson Square, rolled down her window and handed the policewoman directing traffic one of her business cards.
The gurus tell us to engage in social media. Your potential clients are all online, the thinking goes, so be social and engage them. No one ever seems to point out that typing a form letter on a computer to everyone is just about the least social thing you can do. In certain social circles in the South, where tradition and good manners still count for something, tapping computer keys to get someone's attention is actually thought to be anti-social.
Public opinion seems to have concluded two things about travel agents: They are a one-stop shop for just about anything that involves moving about some quadrant of our planet, and they will soon disappear because, as everyone knows, everyone now does everything on the Internet.
Given the 50% decline in brick-and-mortar agencies since 2005, some folks in midsize and smaller towns can hardly find an agent who is well traveled. This is particularly true in the Midwest, which has the smallest percentage of operating agencies. Increasingly, travel is handled by home-based agents. This is now so pervasive that magazines and meetings are entirely devoted to the breed. They have their own organizations, and they are a force to be reckoned with as they go to war with the online travel giants that now control more than 60% of all bookings.
So, what are we doing about this? Very little, I am afraid.
Most agencies are still operating on a horizontal playing field in a vertical world. New thinking is required and new models will need to be developed quickly, or brick-and-mortar shops will disappear in the digital onslaught.
What has happened to the adult-bookstore owner is happening to travel agents. But in the case of pornography, the end user often ends up getting it online for free. In travel, innocent consumers are led to believe they are paying less in return for giving up truly personalized services.
I am going to ask you one important question: "Would you seriously be open to restocking your travel shelves if it meant self-preservation?"
Let's start with the airlines. If you are selling nonbusiness travel, you're in the leisure game. Leisure is a vague term that bores me, so let's say that you devote your time to planning vacations. Or, to make it even more exciting, that you spend your life planning some of the best moments of other people's lives. So, I ask you, why in the world would you want to sell any product for which the chance for a satisfactory experience is low?
Selling airline tickets -- and I mean no disrespect here -- is like having the talent to be a chef while contenting yourself to sling hash at the local diner.
What if, instead of selling airline tickets, you became an airline ticket facilitator? Some of your clients have miles, some want the cheapest seats, upgrades or the best routing. They expect you to know the details of service on competing carriers.
Increasingly, clients want to use a flight-monitoring service that will take care of every aspect of their flying experience. You can do it all without ever writing an airline ticket by working with a team of professionals in each category of air travel. You can be an airline "good guy" who suffers none of the abuse of poorly executed flights and reservations. You will not be the person who gets the midnight flight-cancellation call. You will not have to listen to grousing that one of the majors flew a client coast-to-coast on a chicken sandwich.
You can be a hero, referring your clients to the air provider who is best suited for their unique needs. In some cases, that will mean your client should be visiting the airline's own website.
Several of the leading consortia now issue tickets for members who gave up or never had IATA status. So you are earning commission without ever issuing a ticket. Several of the better air-monitoring services will do ticketing and pay the referring agent commission for the referral.
When we opened the doors to our firm 29 years ago, we embarked on a business plan that did not involve airline ticketing. But in those days, you needed an IATA number to make all sorts of reservations with suppliers. We started doing a fair amount of business, and they started sending us fake IATA numbers. At one point, we had 27, because supplier accounting was designed using IATA numbers as the primary tracking device.
But that is no longer the case. Now, our clients regularly compliment us on our decision to never write an airline ticket. They seem to enjoy having someone who will put them in direct contact with the best source for their unique requirements. They actually seem to prefer that we are not issuing the ticket in-house.
Instead of being an "agent of the airlines," think vertically; consider becoming a consumer-driven adviser who has the client's best air interests at heart.
The cruise sector was once the darling of the sales force, but that is changing. Do you really want three- and four-day cruises stocked on your imaginary shelves? Are you in business to make $79 in commission? What about $899 Caribbean cruises? Can you honestly do a counseling job involving several meetings or consultations with the client and feel good about the fact that you've been engaging in an unprofitable transaction when measured against the time you've put into it and the cost to operate your business?
Cruise lines have their NCFs. Tour packages leave out the food component. If there is not substantive sightseeing, your tour commission is based on a low-cost resort stay.
But it really doesn't have to be this way. You can simply wake up one morning and decide that you're going to stop responding to the wishes of the inexperienced consumer. Instead, you can become the authority. Rate and evaluate cruise lines and their products. Point out the shortcomings of budget tour operators using inexpensive hotels.
Give clients professional hotel evaluation reports. Wean them off herd-instinct reviews by uneducated fellow travelers. Few things amaze me in this industry more than the very small percentage of agents who know that independent hotel inspection reports written by professionals are available to them on every major property throughout the world. Set up in-house hotel criteria on your hotel shelves. And include a midrange alternative boutique property in every city. Become an arbiter of taste rather than an order-taker. Try to answer this question: What are the minimum criteria for a travel product to be stocked on my shelves?
The idea here is that you want your clients to be able to tell their friends that their vacation consultant "is not a travel agent." To think vertically, you need to question whether or not you have the skills and experience to become a true travel specialist. And the guts.
But don't worry. People like specialists. They see legal and medical specialists, so why shouldn't we be certified specialists? There is no shame, only pride, in saying, "We don't sell that product. It doesn't meet our standards."