Welcome to The Home Based Travel Agent Show

Show Notes

In this episode of the podcast, we explored the importance of using emotion in selling a travel product. We discussed the differences between logical and emotional decision-making processes and how travel brands can use emotional strategies to reach and resonate with their target audience effectively.

We outlined several emotional strategies that travel agents can use to pitch their travel product, such as creating a sense of urgency, evoking feelings of relaxation and escape, highlighting uniqueness and authenticity, focusing on the emotional benefits of the trip, and using customer testimonials and reviews. We also discussed how using stories, vivid language, exclusivity, and humor can be effective in creating a memorable and persuasive pitch.

Understanding the target audience and tailoring emotional strategies to their specific needs and desires is crucial in creating a compelling and persuasive pitch. Authenticity is also vital in creating a genuine emotional connection with consumers.

While using emotional strategies is important, providing practical and helpful information about the travel product is essential, such as pricing, itinerary, accommodations, and transportation. This builds trust and credibility, reinforcing the product’s emotional appeal.

Overall, using emotion in selling a travel product can be a powerful and effective strategy that differentiates your product from competitors. Thank you for tuning in to today’s podcast, and we look forward to bringing you more insights and strategies in the future.

The Fine Print

Thank you for listening to the Home Based Travel Agent Podcast. Barry, or the Show, receives no compensation from the guests on our show, or from the companies they represent unless we state otherwise during the show. We invite guests to our show because they offer something of value to the travel trade community. The Home Based Travel Agent Show is funded from the resources of Barry Kantz.

© 2023 All Rights Reserved

Show Notes

In today’s show, we are speaking with Chris Falvey with Unique NOLA Tours, and we are going to learn about New Orleans. New Orleans is one of the unique cities in the United States. The city has an immense history that is fascinating and, at the same time, quite colorful. A part of the history is some of the most beautiful 19th-century homes and neighborhoods, each a significant part of New Orlean’s history and present-day flavor.

In addition to the colorful history, New Orleans is home to some of the world’s most fascinating ghost stories and present-day hauntings. Goose bumps on a warm day are not unusual as you tour some of the haunted houses and haunted areas.

If it’s crime stories that fascinate you, then New Orleans has many to choose from, including those from the past and those from the present day.

Join us in today’s show to learn more about how you or your clients can take a deep dive into the beauty, culture, history, and hauntings of New Orleans.

“Our real niche inside New Orleans here is … we have a variety of tours … we do like the ghost tours and we do them in sort of a different and unique manner but we have a variety of history tours that we’re really proud of.”

“We have a true crime tour which we started with, and really that’s our most popular tour because it’s kind of something that’s got mass market appeal and going to historic murders and … recent as well.”

“We also have a garden district tour that’s all sorts of history-type stuff, and the French Quarter, what we call our locals guide to the French Quarter, gives people a local spin on New Orleans in general and go into a lot of the history of the City.”

“The one thing that you will get on our tours that go up to the La Lurie mansion is a very well-researched version of the story. We don’t like to put out anything that isn’t fully accurate. … We like to make sure that when you go on our tours, we’re not going to lean into the kitschiness of certain things like the La Lurie mansion. … It’s important to us to stick to the historic facts.”

“One of our main selling points is that we keep our tours to fifteen people or less. We like the more intimate tour, and this is the case for all of our tours.”

Links to Items We Talked About in the Show

Unique NOLA Tours

Email Chris at [email protected]

Phone: (504) 777-7769

The Fine Print

Thank you for listening to the Home Based Travel Agent Podcast. Barry, or the Show, receives no compensation from the guests on our show, or from the companies they represent unless we state otherwise during the show. We invite guests to our show because they offer something of value to the travel trade community. The Home Based Travel Agent Show is funded from the resources of Barry Kantz.

© 2023 All Rights Reserved

Show Notes

Where do people want to travel in 2023? Peter Worthing with Audley Travel explains that Japan and Australia are among the top ten destinations according to Audley Travel’s survey of their clients. In addition to the popular destinations, trains have become a popular mode of travel particularly in Europe, and the Japanese Bullet Train is fascinating as you travel nearly 300 miles per hour between destinations.

Perhaps you have clients who love the destinations that you specialize in but one day one of those clients asks you to put together a trip that is outside of your specialty. What do you do? Audley Travel is there to help you. Audley has over 250 destination specialists to assist you in planning your client’s trip. In today’s show we talk about the top ten destinations and how Audley Travel can help you put together a unique trip that will exceed your clent’s desires.

“What we do at Audley is custom design every single itinerary, they’re never the same twice, for the travel advisor team.”

“Like most decisions we make it’s based on feedback from our clients and our travel advisors. We look at trends. Japan is number one on our list this year.”

“Another top destination for us is Australia. It’s always been a strong seller.” “If you look to Europe, Spain is making a big rebound.”

“Another one that is topping the charts for us is Egypt. We’re seeing more and more people going to Egypt.”

“We did a very unofficial survey this year of our over 250 country specialists and amazingly we figured out that each of them has lived in the destination they sell for an average of two plus years. … And, we invest a lot of money and time every year by sending them back to their destination on a yearly basis. They get to meet the ground handlers, they get to stay in the hotels, they get to meet the guides which is really important. That in depth insider knowledge really sets us apart.”

Links to Items We Talked About in the Show

Audley Travel

Email Bart at [email protected]

The Fine Print

Thank you for listening to the Home Based Travel Agent Podcast. Barry, or the Show, receives no compensation from the guests on our show, or from the companies they represent unless we state otherwise during the show. We invite guests to our show because they offer something of value to the travel trade community. The Home Based Travel Agent Show is funded from the resources of Barry Kantz.

© 2023 All Rights Reserved

Show Notes

North Lake Tahoe is a beautiful destination where you can explore the beauty of all that nature has to offer. There are beautiful beaches, crystal-clear freshwater lakes, and mountain vistas blended with amazing sunsets. Along with the beauty of North Lake Tahoe, you have ample opportunity to enjoy the area through recreational activities such as hiking, mountain biking, skiing, water sports, and just relaxing.

Bart Peterson, the Business Development Manager for North Lake Tahoe, joins today’s show to detail all that North Lake Tahoe has to offer you or your clients. We’re excited to have you join us and learn more about North Lake Tahoe.

“North Lake Tahoe, we’re really known as having the greatest concentration of ski resorts. We not only have the big resorts that are on the popular passes, the Epic Pass that Vale has, the Ikon Pass that Alta has. We have some smaller ski areas as well that’s fun to mix it up with the locals and get that unique, quirky atmosphere with the smaller ski areas.”

“We also have an extensive network of mountain biking and hiking trails in our mountains. The beaches really get busy in the summertime, so I suggest to use that opportunity to find a vista; pack a lunch, go for a hike, explore that network of trails and take a view of Tahoe from up above.”

“But beyond recreation in the summertime, we’re also talking about touring historic estates. We have Thunderbird Lodge on the Northeast shore of the Lake. The east shore of the Lake is largely undisturbed, and the reason for that is this gentleman, George Whittel, Jr., owned the whole eastern shore of the Lake in the early 1900s and thanks to him, we can now enjoy that space. You can tour his mansion on the east shore and can learn about the guy who’s the reason for our shoreline being undisturbed and pristine as it is.”

Links to Items We Talked About in the Show

Go Tahoe North Website

Email Bart at [email protected]

The Fine Print

Thank you for listening to the Home Based Travel Agent Podcast. Barry, or the Show, receives no compensation from the guests on our show, or from the companies they represent unless we state otherwise during the show. We invite guests to our show because they offer something of value to the travel trade community. The Home Based Travel Agent Show is funded from the resources of Barry Kantz.

© 2022 All Rights Reserved

Show Notes

Shane Mahoney of Lugos travel joins the show to describe how his company takes the stress out of creating unique luxury travel packages for his clients. The process of creating a unique luxury travel package is time-consuming and stressful for the client. Often the potential client will avoid the stress and time of creating a luxury package and opt for a less unique experience or forgo the travel altogether.

Shane describes his business model and how he can create a luxury package and give his clients a quote in under five minutes. Shane wants his clients to start their vacation with an excellent experience in booking the vacation and to continue that experience throughout their travels.

It’s all about the business process and the experience you give clients as they move through that process. Shane describes this process in detail and gives examples of how he creates unique luxury travel experiences at competitive costs for his clients.

“We take a model of high touch, high customization and transfer that into a more accessible product.”

“What we do and have done in the past with some of the more interesting trips that we’ve done is just really provide a high level of personalized detail in multiple different ways to create a better experience for our clients.”

“Our core business now is actually taking a structure that is good for luxury travel and making it not only easier for our clients to book and enjoy but also a more accessible price point so that we can affect more people.”

“We can deliver a custom, private-level quote with our essential tour package for 66 tours in 19 countries, and we can quote that for any day of the year in under 5 minutes.”

Links to Items We Talked About in the Show

Lugos Travel

ShaneMahoney360

Entrepreneur Travel Club

Travel2GiveBack

The Fine Print

Thank you for listening to the Home Based Travel Agent Podcast. Barry, or the Show, receives no compensation from the guests on our show, or from the companies they represent unless we state otherwise during the show. We invite guests to our show because they offer something of value to the travel trade community. The Home Based Travel Agent Show is funded from the resources of Barry Kantz.

© 2022 All Rights Reserved

Show Notes

Morro Bay is an enchanting small town on the coast of California between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Morro Bay is a fishing town with a beautiful harbor, but it is unlike any other harbor. It is punctuated with a large 800-foot rock rising out of the ocean. You will find several of these ancient volcanic plugs dotting the landscape around Morro Bay. The beautiful morro rising out of the harbor has earned Morro Bay the nickname of Gibraltar on the west coast.

Ancient geology isn’t the only attraction at Morro Bay. There is excellent dining at locally owned restaurants, many small inns where you are personally cared for, and outdoor adventures that will arrange the pixels in your photos or videos like never before.

The Executive Director of Visit Morro Bay, Michael Wambolt, is here in this podcast to describe the beauty and personality of Morro Bay. Listen to our conversation to get an in-depth look at Morro Bay, California.

“The beautiful part about Morro Bay and the location is that we are about halfway between LA and San Francisco off of Highway 101 and Highway 1, and so we are a great stopping point for an overnighter or a multi-night destination.”

“The first thing you are going to see when you roll into Morro Bay is Morro Rock, an 800-foot rick right on the coast. … They call it the Rock of Gibraltar right on the California coast.”

“The great part about Morro Bay is we don’t really have a lot of brands in Morro Bay; we’re an independent spirit destination. Our restaurants, our bars, our activity companies, our hotels are all independently owned. We have a spirit of making it work. … You’ll be able to walk into different places and meet the owners and understand what they are doing, and they love helping people and serving people here.”

Links to Items We Talked About in the Show

Visit Morro Bay

The Fine Print

Thank you for listening to the Home Based Travel Agent Podcast. Barry, or the Show, receives no compensation from the guests on our show, or from the companies they represent unless we state otherwise during the show. We invite guests to our show because they offer something of value to the travel trade community. The Home Based Travel Agent Show is funded from the resources of Barry Kantz.

© 2022 All Rights Reserved

Show Notes

You are going to get hacked or scammed. Adam Levin says travel is a petri dish for hackers and scammers. He says this is a fact of life as sure as death and taxes. It’s essential that you become educated about hacking, scamming, and fishing to protect yourself against such an eventuality.

Adam provides us with a good overview of some of the popular travel scams along with stories of some of the hacks that he has worked on as a consumer protection advocate. Barry also shares a couple of stories of his own about when he was hacked and when he was scammed.

This podcast will inform you of some scams and what you can do to protect yourself from becoming a victim. Don’t miss this opportunity to become more informed.

“Travel in and of itself is a petri dish for identity thieves and scammers and hackers.”

“Whether you are a home based travel agent or you are working for a massive travel organization in their offices, nobody is too unimportant or too insignificant for any hacker to be interested in them. They could be using us as a conduit to a much larger river. People have to understand that as they protect themselves, they are protecting their families, and they are protecting their companies.”

“The question is not, ‘are you going to get breached?’ But, the question is, ‘when are you going to get breached?'”

“If you can’t foster an environment where people feel part of a team where everybody has a sense of ownership of the privacy and security for that particular organization, it’s never going to work. Because hackers, scammers, identity thieves, they’re splitters, and what they do is they go after an individual and hope that that one individual will be so scared that they’re going to do something and that they’re not going to say anything.”

Links to Items We Talked About in the Show

What the Hack Podcast

Swiped: How to Protect Yourself in a World Full of Scammers, Phishers, and Identity Thieves

The Fine Print

Thank you for listening to the Home Based Travel Agent Podcast. Barry, or the Show, receives no compensation from the guests on our show, or from the companies they represent unless we state otherwise during the show. We invite guests to our show because they offer something of value to the travel trade community. The Home Based Travel Agent Show is funded from the resources of Barry Kantz.

© 2022 All Rights Reserved

Show Notes

Dara Busch, Co-CEO and head of the consumer team at 5WPR. 5WPR is the ninth-largest travel public relations company in the world. We have the opportunity to speak with Dara in today’s podcast and discuss their recent investigation and report on consumer spending behavior. Specifically, we talk about how consumers are now spending their money on travel.

Consumers are traveling again. They don’t want to be stuck at home, and they are anxious to get back to their pre-pandemic lives. The number two experience behind dining out is traveling and experiencing new destinations. People are looking for an outdoor experience, an active experience, and not just sitting on a beach. However, for some people, sitting on a beach is still appealing, but that’s not the trend.

Consumers are looking for personal attention when they shop. They want to deal with real people, making shopping a personal experience, a local experience. The pandemic has made people appreciate their local communities, and they want to shop locally. This means that the travel agent should stand on the rooftop and shout that they represent the local community. You do this by participating in community events, the Little League, the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, plus many others.

The trend is toward the local shopping experience, but the expectation of immediate results is a strong trend. People expect, when they shop, to have a product in hand when they leave the store. The traveler will want a trip in hand, a date set, and a ticket in hand when they walk away from a consultation with you.

These are other trends identified in the 5WPR consumer behavior report. Dara and I talk about some other trends in this podcast that you will want to hear.

“I think that travel is back in a big way, and I think it is going to continue to grow.”

“Consumers are really trying to tap into travel agents because they know what the here and now is for places because something that might have been a great destination, a great excursion, or a great place to visit three years ago might be very different today.” “It might have a different feel to it [because of Covid]. “A travel agent is going to help navigate the changing landscape of destinations because Covid has ravaged many places.”

“Do anything you can to be out and around that local community; people know you, people want to work with you, they want to support you locally. And, the more that you shout from the rooftops, meaning the more you connect with local consumers across the board, the better marketing you will ever have.”

“To be able to spend time with a human being who’s going to actually take away all the questions, ‘am I clicking on this right,’ ‘did I book it right,’ and just hand you what you’re dying for, which is a great trip and that is worth its weight in gold.”

“Testimonials are huge! Show that picture of that family zip lining in a remote part of the world.”

Links to Items We Talked About in the Show

5WPR – Dara’s Public Relations Firm

Podcasts Related to This Show

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Show Notes

Maneuvering the ins and outs of social media can be a complex task but very important for your marketing efforts. Successful businesses today must have a social media presence and a marketing strategy to go with it. It doesn’t matter if you are selling to a local market or you have a nationwide client base. You must be present on social media.

My guest today is Cyndee Harrison, principal of the Pawnbroker Network, a marketing and public relations company that serves all types of businesses. Cyndee outlines where to start your social media presence and what to do once you begin.

We talk about how to get your clients to engage with you on social media and even how to get them to write reviews and contribute stories about their trips. This type of engagement is essential, and Cyndee tells us how to do it.

Even if you have a strong social media presence right now, you can still pick up a few good tips by listening to this podcast. I encourage you to join us.

Cyndee Harrison

“We have to make sure that we are communicating the fact that we have the authority and relevance in the subject they are looking for … .”

“If you really want to have a broad range of content get it from the people you engage with.”

“The most overlooked channel for sharing posts is actually Google My Business.”

“You really need a blog site and you need to feed it and water it. … If you are going to all the trouble to generate really engaging social media content then do yourself a favor and put it on your blog.”

Links to Items We Talked About in This Show

The Pawn Broker Network

Special Note: In show #440 we interviewed Dawn Barclay about traveling with special needs children. At the time of the interview, Dawn’s book was not published. But today the book, “Traveling Different: Vacation Strategies for Parents of the Anxious, the Inflexible, and the Neurodiverse Traveling Different: Vacation Strategies for Parents of the Anxious, the Inflexible, and the Neurodiverse,” is now available on Amazon and other major retailers.

Podcasts Related to This Show

429 – How to Unlock Great Content for Your Social Media Marketing

409 – Leveraging Social Media to Fire Up Your Business With Matt Bertram

391 – Boost Your Revenue; Advertise on Social Media

The Fine Print

Thank you for listening to the Home Based Travel Agent Podcast.

Show Notes

Exploring nature and spending time in environments that is conducive to such activities is growing in popularity among all age groups.

Combining exploring the Grand Canyon, and native cultures, and adding in luxury accommodations where you can spend your nights gazing at dark skies is a winning combination. Imagine sleeping in a geodesic dome with a sky panel where you can view the Milky Way, other vast galaxies, shooting stars, and all that a beautiful dark sky offers. In the evening you will see amazing sunsets. Then, during the day, you can explore the Grand Canyon.

Clear Sky Resorts is where you can do all this in a four-star environment. Clear Sky resort is about 25 minutes south of the entrance to the south rim of the Grand Canyon and about 25 minutes north of Williams, Arizona, which is on Route 66. The location of Clear Sky Resorts also offers a variety of daytime activities. This includes daytime hikes of varying degrees of difficulty and the opportunity to explore the south rim of the Grand Canyon. And Williams, Arizona, is full of Route 66 memorabilia.

Clear Sky Resorts works with travel agents, and they offer fam trips. You can go to their website and get their contact information or email them at [email protected]. They will be happy to set you up with an account and provide you with commissions for your bookings.

“We have geodomes and we call them skydomes because every dome has a view of the sky through a skylight and while you are laying in bed you can look up and see stars. There is a huge panoramic window and … you can even see the hue of the Milky Way.“

“It is a dark sky area. You have a very large structure that also has a homey feel, we have air conditioning and a four-star bathroom. So, we try to make it almost like you are in a four-star hotel, … but with star gazing just out your door or even from your bed through the skylight. You can open up an electronic shade in the ceiling and you can leave it open if you want to see the stars or shut it if … you don’t want to get woken up early by the sun but it is a fun way to wake up.“

“The resort has a lot of activities. We have star gazing tours five days a week but we have a lot of amazing activities. We have romantic get-a-ways. We have one room that has a bed that hangs from the ceiling, you take a spiral staircase up and you can literally see the stars about six feet above you is the skylight.“

“We’re fortunate to have a Native American flute-making artist here who will come in the evenings. He is a Grammy award-winning flute artist and it’s almost magical to see stars while you are hearing this flute.”

Links to Items We Talked About in This Show

Clear Sky Resorts

Podcasts Related to This Show

443 – Astrotourism With Michael Marlin

The Fine Print

Thank you for listening to the Home Based Travel Agent Podcast. Barry, or the Show, receives no compensation from the guests on our show,