It’s all very doable

Last night I went out for way too many drinks with an old buddy of mine from the west coast. She and I go back to the beginning of our travel careers at a tour company long since dead and buried. Most of us that worked there have remained fast friends and although some have moved, reunions are always a blast.

Teresa (not her real name) has become very successful, her travel agency is known far and wide especially in suppliers’ circles. Teresa’s company has managed over relatively few years to amass a very large email list, I mean huge! She achieved this goal by making the collection of emails mandatory and a measurable part of her human resource strategy. As the company grew, so did her staff and as a result, so did her client email list.

This was just one of her strategies but in discussing her success it quickly became evident that it was based on:

• Development of a business plan with a sound strategy (not rocket science, just common sense and proper market end competitive research)

• Ensuring that everyone who had anything to do with the company was dead clear on their part of the plan  

• Sticking to the plan and reviewing/adjusting periodically

• And, adopting all the benefits that the internet and email technology has to offer.  

Today, 95% of Teresa’s business is related to email marketing and internet strategies and yet, her colleagues at conventions continue to ask her whether it is possible to compete with the internet behemoths.

So, the Teresa’s of the world are making tons of money with happy clients while the rest wonder….

Behave

Frank

Travelwatch

Not ebrochures again!

I was reading an article in Marketing Magazine about how online classifieds are luring readers away from newspapers and how to date, newspapers have responded (or not, as in most cases). The article interviews a series of executives and media buyers on ‘what will tomorrow’s newspapers look like’. The answers vary wildly however everyone seemed to agree with one particular quote “classified, automotive, real estate and weather as we know them today will no longer exist in the paper versions”. It seems they all agree that the more visual and up-to-date version found online is a better product. This represents a tremendous loss of income for the papers and they’re all struggling with strategy on how to manage change.

More visual and up-to-date is the key lesson here. Wholesalers spend millions in printing brochures that become outdated before they leave the presses. For years we’ve been hearing that the time is quickly coming for print-on-demand and online brochures but…we’re still waiting. Suppliers will tell you that they print brochures because “its good to have it sitting around consumers coffee tables” or “that’s how it’s done” or because “we don’t want to be the first” but the real reason used to be the loss of revenue from the ads hoteliers and other suppliers provided.

Could things be finally changing? Advertising revenue is harder than ever to come by, most hoteliers have adopted a “low rate or ad, pick one” attitude.

So what does this mean to the retailer? Get to the point Frank!

In a previous Blog, I mentioned how in a survey I ran, 23% of agencies “do not or are working on” getting an email client list together and how 48% of hits on my site in September were on dial-up. So if brochures go away and you don’t have a client email list you’ll be sending photocopies of web pages with outdated pricing through regular mail. That’s effective!

Behave,

Frank

PS. Like the new look? 

The World’s Greatest Interview Question

Here’s something that I came across that I think is awfully handy! Richard Sloma wrote “No Nonsense Management” back in 1977. His reputation was that of a man with a knack for distilling complex issues down to one or two key points; here’s a great example!

He had ONE, single job interview question that he used for learning almost everything you need to know about an interviewee’s managerial competence.  Here you go…

“What was the worst mistake you ever made; and what was the worst damage you did to your employer’s P&L and balance sheet?”  

According to Mr. Sloma, you immediately learn four critical things about a candidate from his or her answer:

1. The importance of the mistake directly identifies the level that the candidate had in his employer’s hierarchy.  (people cannot – in most cases- make big mistakes at low levels).
2. The importance of the mistake demonstrates the extent of the leadership exercised.
3. Likely not to be repeated, the mistake provides you with the depth of experience gained by the interviewee.
4. Finally, the depth of the answer reveals character traits — especially the extent to which the mistake was palmed off as someone else’s fault.

First opportunity, I’m using it! 

Behave, Frank

I’m pissed!

Hi everyone, crazy busy, where did the time go!

I lost my temper this morning and wrote a letter to Travel Hot News  responding to an article about ‘The World Travel Internet Conference’ held in the Turks last week.

I’d like to share…

Internet “a great equalizer for the little guys” in travel!

What Floyd Hall and his colleagues addressed in the conference your article refers to, is an old tune and in my opinion, still accurate. The elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is the fact that the majority of agencies in North America have been given every opportunity to get up-to-date with technology and have refused. Apathy, denial and a stubborn ‘entitlement’ attitude from agents (created by the old CRS’s) impedes progress.

I have spent the last 16 years of my career trying to change this so I think I’ve earned the right to tell this group (and they know who they are) “get on with it or you’ll be out of business”. Simple as that! There is no lack of tools, products and services available to the travel industry to turn things around.

I recently read a (feeble) article quoting someone at ACTA addressing the need to do something to attract a “young pool of talent” to the travel business. Well let’s see, here’s a couple of stats that will be sure to have every teenager panting to get into travel school:

1.      48.60% of the visits by travel agents to my website from mid-august to mid-September were on dial-up!
2.      23.2% or respondents to a ‘Canadian Retail Industry Survey’ that Travelwatch ran 3 weeks ago replied that they either ‘Do not have’ or are ‘working on’ collecting client email addresses.

That ought to scare the pants off Expedia and Travelocity! Behave everyone,best
Frank

Segment Shmegment!

So you got your brand spanking new database, know how to drive it?

Last week I wrote about how to get your client list up-to-date and promised to address those of you without a list. This is not rocket science. Simply be polite, professional, ask for an email and explain what you will be doing with it. That’s right, what you are going to do with it! Have you thought about it? Have you got a plan?

I won’t go into how to select the right software, drop me a note on that if you like. But I will discuss how to properly use your database and its segmentation capabilities. Segmentation is a valuable customer management tool, excellent market research tool and if you have a nice fat budget for top-of-the line software and staff, it can be a valuable marketing tool. However, to the typical travel retailer, the following scenario is much too common…

You receive a “Free air and Free Golf” special from a supplier; you rush to your new dB program and fire an email off to all golfers. Mrs. Brown told you she was a golfer and that she liked museums but she also told you she’s a teacher and can only get time off in the summer. You forgot, or didn’t have the time to check each customer file individually and now she’s opted-out of your list because it’s the 4th golf special you sent this winter. Your noble targeting effort turned into a typical unproductive shotgun broadcast! Don’t be too upset, most of your colleagues market that way so my guess is that she belongs to about 5 or 6 travel agency database lists and has absolutely no loyalty to any agent.

Until, she comes across an agency that understands that email contact is all about acquiring and nurturing client loyalty. Making sure that the client knows why they do business with you and why you’re their travel agent (for more on this, refer to my article Bob’s MY Travel Agent). Soft-sell, non-product, interesting, but most important, REGULAR messages work much better than alienating customers because of faulty segmentation. Over time, Mrs. Brown will belong to such a list and probably one more to keep you honest but most important; she will always give you the opportunity to compete on the booking when she’s ready to travel.

By regularly emailing your customers with the right message, you generate business by being top-of-mind when that particular customer wants to travel. You won’t be as dependant on the sporadic shotgun approach and therefore able to select your clients more carefully for that golf special. I guarantee you increased loyalty from the former and increased response from the latter.

Clear as mud?

BTW…I launched the 10 question survey and within the first few days I had about 150 answers! Thanks everyone, for your effort and help. Some of you on my blog list did not get the survey…SORRY! I’ll get it to you as soon as I can.

Behave,

Frank

Like a junkie!

Hi everyone I’m back!

Don’t ever take 4 days holidays, you just start to ‘relax’ and bang! Back at work – Like a junkie back in rehab!

I got in this dire condition by launching Travelwatch and going nuclear on our travel budget. Last year Michelle and I took the month of June and rode around Italy from head-to-toe on a brand new Ducati ST3. This year – four days…yea, I’m whining.

 “Valentino” Ducati ST3

So… I’m about ready to launch a 10 question survey to thousands of travel agents. The questions revolve mainly around marketing. One question asks: Do you use email marketing to stay in touch with your customers? I won’t guess what the percentage of yes vs. no’s will be, but I’ll bet you that everyone that says ‘no’ will be because they don’t have an e-mailing list. That’s right… in today’s travel industry! These are the same agents that complain that the online agencies are stealing their business!  

Let me help if I can. You either do not have a client list at all or, you have a client list (in some cases quite extensive) but you don’t have email addresses. Let’s deal with this latter one now. Take the time one afternoon and search for every customer name and address you have on business cards, index cards, the back office system, excel sheets, etc. Take your lowest paid employee or hire a student to input all names and addresses, etc. in one single Excel sheet. Excel is by far the easiest program to translate this data into more sophisticated forms better suited for marketing. But that comes later. 

Once you have a decent list take all the ones with no email address and write them a letter. Remind them that at some point they were in contact with your agency, give them a present if you have one (percentage off your booking fee, fridge magnets, or stale candy, whatever) but most importantly ask them for their business, their email and their permission to use it. Include your e-mail address and a PREPAID return envelope and sit back and wait. Another way to approach this task is to do it by telephone (updating our records bla, bla, bla) but be careful, put your very best senior people on this as this is very close to cold calling and one wrong word, you’ve blown it forever. My opinion? Use the letter it’s more effective and the rejection hurts less. I hate rejection! 

The ‘no’ list guys… later… 

Behave

Frank 

Tag you’re it!

I know, I promised to write about travel advertising but this is more interesting. This may seem like old news to some of you but I just discovered ‘tagging’. No ,not the graffiti kind, but the web 2.0 kind -  its a terrific tool for travel and for those of us with increasing memory lapses.

If you want the long version I encourage you to read an excellent article by John Bray at PhocusWright (if you can get past their self-serving habit of coining new names and catchy phrases at every opportunity) but I digress, where was I, right, here’s the link http://www.travelindustrywire.com/article23532.html.

If you prefer the short version, tagging is a way to bookmark or identify a web page for later use. You get to write yourself a little note as to why you tagged the page to begin with and its available to you when you need it with one click. It’s great for travel as the tags can be shared so, as an example, if you were doing research for a customer on say Venezuela, you can search ‘Travel Venezuela’ and see what other people have bookmarked. You end up getting to what you need a lot faster than googling it and going through the 15 million pages.

I use a service called delicious (www.delicious.com) it’s free, the toolbar is easy to download (just say yes to every question) and you’ll amaze your friends and customers by quickly being able to find sometime totally useless trivia.

Just like i do!

Michelle, Paco (wheaten/poodle cross) and I are off for a few days to recharge, I’ll take pics of the monster fish I’ll catch… be good.

 Frank

Wake up, its time to take your sleeping pill!

The embodiment of futility isn’t it!
Well here’s another, the silly season is about to start. Winter travel – when the (big?) retail travel numbers are made and the ‘catalogue ads’ start. Here’s what most of it will look like: 
Cancun $1199
Puerto Vallarta $899
Jamaica – all inclusive $1999
Bla Bla – $399 
Great stuff isn’t it? If you are going down that route I hope you have some major supplier co-op dollars because the only thing you are doing is marketing their product in the hopes that a customer will pick YOU over another ad with the same or lower price. The supplier always gets the business, through your agency or another, doesn’t matter.
And it gets even more frustrating. Any perception customers may have towards your niche or unique selling proposition, goes right out the window because you just told them your service is the same as everyone else’s in that newspaper. The only comparison is price and as a rule, you have very little control over that.
Can we get a little more creative please? I’m no ad writer but let’s assume that we are a couple of girls or a small group of friends in their mid-twenties, arguably in the more price sensitive portion of the market, and you saw these two ads. Which would you pick? 
Cancun $1199
Or
Our Cancun vacations have been scientifically designed to attract maximum attention from the opposite sex! They include a 2 page guide to Cancun nightlife written by Skanka, our resident disco-hound. 

I bet that you’re going to get way more traffic from the second one! Get creative! Next blog: Carpet-bombing your e-mailing list with a copy of your home page! Yawn…