Travel Leaders Group's new brand, Vacation, repurposes its Vacation.com URL into a consumer-facing site with content designed to attract potential travelers. When they are considered a "hot lead," the site introduces an agent into the mix. Senior editor Jamie Biesiada sat down with chief marketing officer Stephen McGillivray and vice president of marketing Brian Hegarty to discuss how Vacation will affect agents.
Q: The ultimate purpose of Vacation is to drive more leads to agents. How do you predict it will affect the average agency?
Stephen McGillivray
McGillivray: I'd like to think that they're going to feel this impact significantly with new customers, and new customers that are ready to buy. To me, that's the key.
Some lead-gen tools, you're not sure the quality of the lead you're getting. It might be just a researcher, it might just be someone too early in the journey.
Hegarty: We're really attracting a customer that never even considered using a travel agent in the first place, so we're going after a whole new set of customers that agents maybe don't even compete for today. And we're providing agents the opportunity to plug and play, so where they need additional business they can plug into the tool and take on additional business. But if they're busy and they don't need it, they can unplug it.
Brian Hegarty
Q: Why are the leads coming from Vacation better than the leads coming from your Agent Profiler lead-generation tool?
McGillivray: Because of the simple fact that they are nurtured. They have consumed content along their journey, and we've introduced along that journey the concept of them getting validation about the trip, the product and content they're looking at.
They've accepted that they are willing to have the professional travel agent, our agent, engage with them.
Q: What are the parameters to qualify to get leads from Vacation?
Hegarty: First and foremost, we're looking for expertise. We've built the promise to the customer, to the prospect, that Vacation is all about expertise. So we're looking for agents who have expertise in the selected segments that we're featuring, honeymoon and wedding being the first. There's a requirement that they have to accept the leads through the AgentMate tool [a proprietary business operating system]. We also have a requirement for them to be reporting back the status of the lead that we give them so that we know whether it's booked or not.
McGillivray: Location. The agent location may or may not be important to the consumer. Some consumers, it'll be important to them to have someone in their community, perhaps, or in their locale. Some people just think: Look, I'm buying something, I'd rather buy local. Some people don't care, they're happy to deal with someone in another state, another region of the country.