Karen Morales rolled up to a five-star hotel in Hawaii, ready to be pampered, and they handed her a room with stairs. She's a wheelchair user, an accessibility advocate, the Head of Accessibility at Fora, and the founder of Joyward Travel. She had sent the emails. She had confirmed the room. It still happened. And that moment is exactly why this conversation matters for every travel advisor, not just the ones who think they specialize in accessible travel.

In this episode of The Art of Selling Travel Podcast, Karen and I dig into why accessible travel is one of the most underserved and most lucrative parts of the market. One in four people globally lives with some kind of condition. Multi-generational trips are the biggest bookings out there right now, and almost every one of them has at least one accommodation baked in. Yet only about 30 percent of accessible rooms are even bookable online, and hoteliers will raise their hands when asked if they've hosted a guest with special needs but go silent when asked if it's in their marketing. The rooms exist. The money exists. The conversation is what's missing.

Karen shares what she's learned from travelling to nearly 50 countries, six of those years in a wheelchair. You'll hear about the hotel in Okinawa that sent her a photo of the bathroom and the shower chair before she arrived, the Sicilian beach club owner who bought a beach wheelchair and assigned two lifeguards to get her in the water, and the morning in Japan when her chair died on day one of a two-week trip and a DMC with boots on the ground saved the entire vacation. That last one is the reminder every advisor needs. There are moments in travel that no amount of research and no AI is ever going to fix. A human with a relationship in market will.

We also get practical. Karen walks through the questions that actually work, like asking whether a client can comfortably climb into a Sprinter van instead of asking if they need an accessible room, or reframing a flat shower with a railing as risk reduction instead of a disability accommodation. I share the story of a family who kept insisting on room service for years until I finally asked why, learned their son was autistic, and completely changed how I planned for them. The lesson in both cases is the same. Ask better questions, ask them with hospitality, and stop leaving things at the surface.

If you're a travel advisor who wants to serve an aging client base, land more multi-generational bookings, and be the person your clients trust when things go sideways, this one is for you. Find Karen at ForaTravel.com on the accessibility page, or through her own brand, Joyward Travel.

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Ever heard "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"? Turns out that's pretty solid marketing advice too. In this episode of The Art of Selling Travel Podcast, Glenda Beagle gets real about why the exact same words can land as supportive, sarcastic, or straight-up angry depending on the energy behind them, and why that matters more than most travel advisors realize when they sit down to write an email, record a video, or post on social.

She also breaks down why knowing your audience changes everything, with a story about writing a roast for her dad and uncle's 75th birthday while her cousin wrote a toast. Both worked, because both of them knew exactly who they were talking to and what they were there to do. Your marketing needs the same clarity. Who is it for? What's the intent? What do you want them to feel? If you can't answer those, no amount of money thrown at ads, agencies, or courses is going to fix it. And if you're paying someone to do your marketing and they've never asked you those questions, they're just taking your money.

What to do when your energy's off: gut check, wait a day if you need to, go for a walk, have a dance party, shake it out. Get to a place where you're focused on the who, the what, the intent, and the outcome before you create anything. That's how you make messaging that actually lands.

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Going viral is not the point.

In fact, it might actually hurt your travel business, and in this episode Glenda explains exactly why. She breaks down the four ways people actually make money on social media (view revenue, collaborations, affiliates, and selling your own product) and why only some of those matters for a travel advisor. If you are not grinding out ten videos a day for ad revenue, then vanity numbers are a distraction from the KPIs that actually move your business. 

She shares the story of a bakery that hired a "go viral" consultant and ended up posting content that is off-brand, uncomfortable, and makes you question their food handling, while other bakeries go viral simply because people love watching cake decorating. She also calls out the business coach who went viral once with a chin-up video and is now selling a course on how to do it (yet hasn't repeated it herself).

The lesson in both cases is the same. When your focus becomes going viral, you lose sight of who you are creating for, why you are creating, and what you are actually selling. You end up attracting the wrong audience and pushing away the people who would have bought from you.

Then comes the reframe that changes everything. That video with 100 views? That's 100 humans in a room, silent, giving you their full attention while you tell them a story. How often do you get that chance? On social media, you get it every single day. Captivate those 100 and the algorithm brings you 100 more. Glenda challenges you to stop asking "how do I go viral" and start asking "how can I connect with even one person so they know without question they are in the right place."

This is exactly what the Building an Audience workshop is about. Glenda is flipping the traditional awareness, evaluation, sales funnel into community, connection, conversion, and tackling the gremlins that tell you nobody wants to hear your voice. Join us September 22, 23, and 24, 2026 at artofsellingtravel.com/grow.

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Let's just get this out of the way: your email list is not a nice-to-have. It's not something you'll "get to eventually." It is the one digital asset you actually own, and if you're not building it, you're building your business on rented land.

In this episode I'm making the case (loudly) for why email needs to be a non-negotiable in your marketing, why social media alone could leave you stranded, and exactly what makes a good weekly email work.

Spoiler: it's three pieces, one story, and always a PS.

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If marketing feels like a slog, I promise you it's not because you suck at it.

It's because nobody talks about the foundations, they jump straight to the shiney objects and magic pills. Which is like building IKEA furniture with half the parts and no manual.

This week, I'm getting into why "free" marketing from your host agency is quietly costing you clients, why AI content is setting off alarm bells for your audience, whether you realize it or not, and why the "faceless" trend was always going to die (I called it back then too).

In this episode, I also talk about the marketing funnel and why most advisors have it backwards, and why I ditched AI for my own writing.

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River cruises aren't cancelled this year, they're adjusting, and that distinction matters more than most advisors are giving it credit for. In this episode Glenda breaks down how to actually talk to clients about water level disruptions, whether they're already booked or still deciding, without panicking them and without torching your own sales down the road. She uses her own backyard as the example: an Alberta town that went from drought warnings and lake level maps in March to 19 inches of rain by June, proof that conditions change fast and your messaging needs to be built for that reality, not for the panic of the moment.

Listen to Angela Hughes on YouTube on water levels: https://youtu.be/STjy91agNfs?si=7JNGysjyqR1P9_9n 

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Glenda opens with the mantra of the episode: never hit send while you're angry.

It comes out of a TASS coaching call, where an advisor did everything right on a river cruise inquiry (fast turnaround, custom research, a proposal built around what the clients actually wanted) only to find out they'd booked elsewhere. Stung by the loss, she fired off an email listing everything she'd done for them. It didn't land the way she hoped.

Glenda unpacks what happened next: how to repair a client relationship after an emotional reaction, why the word "disappointed" does more work than anger ever will, and why the fix isn't about being right, it's about being the adult in the room.

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No one wants to talk about the "legal" parts of business, but in this episode, Glenda got to speak with Gunes Hopson, a travel lawyer and travel advisor. The biggest mistake a travel advisor can make in their business is not understanding their contract, or believing that their host is always going to do right by them. This is a business and you need to be sure that you're taking the right steps to know what you can and can't do. What leaving looks like long before you ever decide to leave and why ChatGPT is not your friend with legal advice. 

We talked about red flags in agency contracts, when you should consider walking away and why having an exit strategy from your first day is so important. 

Connect with Gunes:

https://www.gfhlawplc.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/gfhlawplc/

https://www.youtube.com/@GFHLawPLC

https://substack.com/@guneshopson

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On this episode, I'm talking about a recent shopping experience I had when purchasing a new mattress.

The story is the two salespeople I dealt with along the way, because they could not have been more different, and it's got everything to do with how you sell travel.

Salesperson one was kind. Genuinely lovely to be around. But every conversation she steered came back to price. She warned me off a mattress for being "too expensive." Told me a pillow and a set of linens were "very, very expensive" before I even asked the number. Never once asked what my budget was. She just decided, based on my ponytail and t-shirt, what I could afford and what I'd consider worth it.

Salesperson two never mentioned money until I brought it up myself. Instead she asked how I sleep. Side or back. Soft or firm. Had me lie down on each mattress and actually stay there, roll over, get comfortable, like it was real life instead of a showroom. Two mattresses ended up basically the same price, so the decision came down to how each one felt, not what it cost.

Here's what actually got me to say yes, though. It wasn't the mattress. It was that I didn't want to deal with hauling my old one to the landfill. She solved that problem for forty extra dollars, and that was the entire close.

Your clients do this too. They stall out, they say "let me think about it," and advisors assume it's the price. Half the time it's not. It's the thing nobody's answered yet: the logistics, the "what happens if," the fear sitting quietly underneath the budget conversation.

Next time a client hesitates, get curious before you get discounty. Ask what's really going on. You might find the real objection has nothing to do with money at all.

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I just wrapped the Groups Workshop, and I did it sick as a dog. Led the morning sessions, crawled back into bed, popped out for the VIP call, crawled back in. Three days of that, and I still call it one of the best things I've done all year. The workshop itself was great. But it's not actually done until the debrief happens too.

In this episode, I walk you through exactly what a debrief actually is (hint: it's your SWOT analysis after the fact) and why so many businesses, nonprofits, and event teams skip the hard parts of it. I shared a story about a nonprofit board I used to sit on, where the "debrief" turned into a pat-on-the-back session instead of an honest look at what worked and what didn't. Spoiler: that's not a debrief, that's a celebration, and celebrations alone don't make you better next time.

From there, I get specific about my own workshop. What I'd do differently (more ads prepped in advance), what surprised me (a picture of my dog outperformed every polished graphic I made), and the wild stat from my sales window: six people bought a ticket for every one person who unsubscribed. I get blunt about what that means if you're scared to sell to your list.

I also get into the unglamorous stuff nobody talks about: cost per hour on your own initiatives, the swipe file I'm building so the next workshop takes half the effort, and why "we could've changed everything" is usually the wrong instinct when something actually worked.

If something didn't sell, I go back to what Michael Vickers always says, price is never the issue, unless it's the issue, the it's only issue, but it's never the issue. The real problem almost always sits in the messaging around the price, not the number itself.

I close out with a peek at what's next: a marketing and audience-building workshop coming September 22 to 24. Priority access list is open now at artofsellingtravel.com/grow, tickets will go on sale in September and when you join the list you get first access ... plus a little bonus. 

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