Meeting the challenges you face in your relationship with hotels
Travel professionals working from home are faced with a unique set of challenges that are often overlooked by anyone considering the move to a home office. First and foremost, there’s the issue of separating your personal life from your professional existence. Then there’s the isolation that can come with spending day after day alone at home. And finally, there’s the temptation to work 24/7.
To compound matters, there are the work issues that home-based sellers deal with because of their office location; working with hotels can be all the more difficult when your office isn’t an actual storefront. There are fewer, if any, sales reps making house calls, and this makes solidifying a relationship with that property or company an arduous task. Here a selection of both agents at home and hoteliers discuss the challenges they encounter in working together and ways to overcome these issues.
Learning about the product. Mastering the ins and outs of a specific hotel or hotel brand can become a full-time job in itself, especially if you’re entering with no knowledge of that particular product. Of course, time is of the essence as far as acquiring new knowledge is concerned, and the hotel industry has become well aware of this travel agent need. This is where hotel training programs come in.
“We realized there are a lot of home-based agents out there who might not have access to the GDS, so we knew there was a void we could fill,” says Phyllis Dunn, manager global travel industry relations at Hilton Worldwide (800-445-8667, www.hilton.com). “We built something from the agent perspective. If you’re working from home, you need easy and instant access to pictures, videos, downloadable e-brochures—all of that content.” Hilton’s dedicated agent site (800-873-1215, www.hiltontravelagents.com) and others like it offer agents with credentials such as IATA, CLIA, ARC or TRUE numbers access to an online booking engine.
Without entering any travel agent numbers, travel sellers can also access special agent incentives and news. “We’ve reacted to feedback from agents, and although we had a good idea of what we wanted to see online, there are always enhancements to be made, and many more hotels with ebrochures and 360 degree tours,” says Dunn.
Making face time. Calling on travel retailers in storefront agencies is routine for most hotel sales representatives, but meeting with agents at home can be more of a challenge. The fact that many travel agents are home based is not always apparent. Some might work for a storefront or host agency (even if remotely) and use the company’s address instead of their own for business purposes. Independent agents might use a post office box simply to avoid advertising their home address. But once a hotel sales rep identifies an agent as home based, he or she is often hesitant to make an appointment with the agent, if only because it can be awkward arriving on someone’s doorstep not knowing where in the agent’s home the meeting will take place.
“Sales people are more apprehensive to visit home-based agents, but we do offer [agents] the chance to visit the hotel so that they can see it first-hand,” says Lisa Tiernan, director of sales and marketing at Boston’s XV Beacon Hotel (www.xvbeacon.com). She also travels around the country doing sales calls, and will often host receptions in hotels with a similar atmosphere to the XV Beacon and invite home-based travel sellers. “If it’s an agent with whom we already have a close relationship, I’ll ask them to meet me for breakfast or lunch,” she says.
Moreover, there are also agents at home who have a space designated specifically for business appointments. “I haven’t had any problems with hoteliers coming to me, since I’m conveniently located, and there’s a place in my home that’s dedicated to meeting with people,” says Bettie Jo Currie, founder of Atlanta-based Currie & Co. To make the space more conducive to sales calls and client meetings, Currie made the space inviting, with good lighting and a surface area for writing. Most importantly, she has one of her two staff members answer the phones so there are no interruptions during an appointment.
Gaining access to commission overrides. Before going home-based for the first time in July, Currie, a 16-year travel agent veteran, struggled with the decision of whether to work with a host agency or strike out on her own entirely. She carefully weighed the pros and cons of each, taking into consideration that the host agency would have more buying power and thus could offer its agents commission overrides. “Most hotel companies have higher level arrangements with their top producers, and of course, it’s difficult to be a higher producer if you’re not with a larger company,” she says. But then Currie took into account the fact that the monthly fees she would have to pay a host would likely diminish those higher earnings.
Ultimately, she chose to operate initially as a wholly independent business, with the help of a good accountant. “I’m also a member of Virtuoso (866-401-7974, www.virtuoso.com), so I have access to a lot of services like commission overrides,” Currie says.
She advises fellow home-based sellers of travel to work with organizations such as Small Luxury Hotels of the World (www.slh.com) when booking hotels internationally. “There are ways to book hotels intelligently when booking abroad, and working with a company that bundles together many properties allows you to work with one person who is responsible for your bookings,” says Currie.
Getting the word out. According to Jim Mauer, general manager of the Harbor Beach Marriott (800-222-8543, www.marriottharborbeach.com) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., one of his biggest challenges is letting the travel agent community—especially home-based travel professionals—know that the 25-year-old hotel just completed a $50 million renovation. As a result, a completely new array of features and amenities are available to guests. For example, a new oceanfront ballroom will debut in January, offering couples getting married at the hotel another option for waterview ceremonies.
But to help spread the word, the hotel’s reservations team includes not only several personal vacation planners who work on bookings made directly by guests who want to plan something special, but also travel retailers who may wish to arrange a special perk for their clients.
“Especially in these down times, travel is becoming a more highly emotional buy, which means travelers will still spend the money, but it better be right. Personal planning is your contact to get it done,” says Mauer. He elaborates that these reservations specialists will help coordinate events and activities for a birthday, proposal, anniversary, small family reunions, and girls’ getaways or guys’ golf trips. They pull together resources such as the concierge, who has all of the area’s restaurant contacts at his disposal; and the general manager, who knows which are the best rooms in the house; and then they work directly with agents to help create a client’s ideal trip.
Selling what you know. Any home-based agent who’s truly focused on selling knows that it can be hard to find the time to actually visit properties, especially when there’s no one else in the office to look after your clients while you’re away. But if you’re selling your expertise, there’s no better sales tool than first-hand experience.
“You can’t sell what you don’t know personally,” says Stephanie Diehl, owner of Travel Designed by Stephanie (www.traveldesigned.com) in Freeport, Ill. So investing the time in hotel visits can be key to your business.
Diehl also points out that experiencing a hotel for yourself can give you the opportunity to get to know not only the brand but also the differences between individual properties within the brand. Recently invited to the opening of the Dreams Riviera Cancun (866-237-3267, www.dreamsresorts.com) in Mexico, Diehl added on stays at three other AMResorts (www.amresorts.com) properties in order “to get a taste for what the company has to offer across three different brands. I decided that as long as I was already there, I would make the best use of my time,” she says. “It’s about taking advantage of business opportunities when they come your way. Now, I can match my clients to the right property far better than I would ever have been able to do previously.” @