Happy Sunday Everyone! It is so good to see the world starting to travel again! I recently returned from Cancun, Mexico.
Our agency was honored to be invited by Apple Leisure Group, 500 Club to an appreciation event for being one of their top travel agencies. We were hosted by AMResorts at the new Dreams Vista Cancun Golf and Spa Resort. It was a packed few days with meetings, networking, and a little fun.
I thought I would pull back the curtain a little bit and share with you some highlights from my trip so here we go!
These trips are so important to those of us in the travel industry. It gives us the opportunity to talk face to face with executives, hotel sales managers, transportation and destination management companies, and more. These face-to-face encounters build relationships that are invaluable to us. We connect with them so we know how to serve our clients better.
This past trip we heard from President, Randy Sinsky, Group President at ALG Vacations. He shared great news about the travel trends for now and in the future. ALG Vacations is seeing a high demand for travel to the Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii. This was so encouraging! The quick responses from the various brands to provide Covid testing and high safety standards has made travel to these destinations very desirable. I personally, was so impressed with the changes, even down to the smallest details, like sanitizing the bottom of your shoes before walking inside any dining location or room in the buildings.
Jacki Marks, Executive Vice President, Apple Leisure Group, shared what ALG is doing to improve systems and communication with travel advisors in order to help their clients with changes, and future travel credits. Over this past year, Jacki has kept us up to date, with transparency which has made a big difference in how we can best serve our clients. Of course, as she acknowledges, there are still challenges that arise, but the efforts to overcome them are ongoing. Jacki set aside time to speak to many owners and managers to hear from them. During our face-to-face meeting, we had the opportunity to discuss business trends, challenges we have had with some of the bookings, and have them ask us questions.
Both Randy and Jacki shared with us statistics on how consumers are moving rapidly toward using a travel advisor since so many travelers faced major challenges booking with online companies and vacations on their own. The knowledge and connections travel advisors have are invaluable to their clients and is not something that you receive from an online company.
Many consumers don’t realize that their travel advisor never received any income from this past year with all the cancellations. They don’t get paid by suppliers until clients travel. This past year, travel advisors worked tireless hours on the phones and at their desks changing or canceling vacations as well as keeping up to date with what was happening in the world with no income. What kept them going was great companies like Apple Leisure Group, and as we all know, that travel will resume and more and more people will want to seek out their expertise when booking their next vacation.
As we celebrate 25 years in the Travel Industry, we are excited about the future! We are grateful to our clients and the suppliers we work with and the relationships that have been built.