Advice from the states: know your client inside-out By Adrian Caruso GUEST COMMENT | TRAVEL WEEKLY 16 November 2007

Having recently returned from the American Society of Travel Agents World Travel Retailing Expo in Las Vegas, the view appears to be that travel agents around the world are on track for success in the years to come.  Travel agents in Australia can also share in this success by changing their business models, focusing on emerging travel trends and capitalising on the worldwide boom in travel.

Expo keynote speakers included some of the world’s top travel agency owners, operators and industry experts.  Each strongly recommended using customer relationship management (CRM) software and making it the backbone of their entire business.   

This means getting to know absolutely everything about your clients, including their travel preferences, interests, hobbies and even where they want to travel to next. Having a CRM strategy is not a luxury for agents these days, rather a prerequisite for survival. A good customers database allows agents to retail clients, acquire new ones and gain a sustainable competitive advantage.

Speakers also encouraged agents to focus on luxury tourism. Affluent baby boomers with a desire to travel valued agents and are willing to pay fees for their advice and service.

A continuing trend seen when I last attended the expo two years ago was the manner in which agents continue to promote themselves as travel specialists or as they are calling themselves now, “travel concierges”. Concierge service includes looking after everything for a client before, during and after the trip. For example organising a housesitter for the client, a kennel for the client’s dog or watering the garden and collecting their mail. They also organise conceirge type services at their destination including booking in a client’s golf tee off times, dinner and theatre reservations, sight seeing, theatre tickets and so on then charging clients a fee for each of these.     

Almost no US agent sells every destination in the world or every type of holiday, but rather acts as a specialist. They found it more profitable to focus on a niche market such as art, fishing, sports events or culinary tours rather than be all things to everyone. US travel consultants promote themselves using professional material on their area of specialization, clients testimonials and to where they have travelled.   They are all about marketing themselves rather than travel suppliers.

One other interesting trend was that the majority of successful travel companies were not part of a franchise, travel operations or a major brand.  They all traded under for their own name. This makes them unique and assists them in promoting themselves to the market they want. However they all belong to a buying consortia of some type.

Another aspect of the US market worth observing was that the majority of travel businesses were not based  in shopping centres, malls or strip locations but rather in off street upstairs offices, relying on repeat clientele, referrals and targeted marketing. 

Agents in the US and around the world are stronger than ever and enjoying incredible success but their business model and focus is different in most cases to agents in Australia.  They have successfully survived the threat of the internet as well as direct bookings with suppliers and are enjoying a boom in worldwide travel.

The upshot of this is that agents in Australia need to change their focus to the emerging travel trends from the world’s largest travel market and get to know their customers like they have never known them before.   

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