Molly Marini is not your typical home-based agent. As an agent associated with Avoya Travel/American Express, she doesn’t market herself or her agency. She’s built her business, in fact, with practically no promotion at all. And yet she was recently recognized as Avoya Travel’s Rising Star and a top producer for Insight Vacations and Trafalgar.
The Rhode Island-based agent is in her 19th year in the travel industry. She started after college graduation, when she worked as an agent with AAA for a few years. For almost 17 years, however, she wasn’t an agent but worked in reservations for escorted tour operators, including Colette Vacations, Trafalgar, Insight and Contiki.
When Marini had her twin sons, she decided to find something more conducive to motherhood and began looking at working from home. When a friend mentioned Avoya, she looked into the agency and decided that the model could work for her.
“After investigating a little bit, I realized that I could specialize in the brands that I knew and where I had been working for the last 17 years,” Marini said. “In other words, I could specialize in the things I love.”
Marini hasn’t had to do much marketing for her home-based agency because she depends almost entirely on Avoya’s Live Leads program, in which the host travel agency provides leads to participating agents. She receives 30% commission on sales.
According to an Avoya spokeswoman, more than 90% of Avoya Travel’s business comes from Live Leads, “so Molly isn’t incredibly unique in our model; however, we do have many independent affiliates who have their own book of business when they affiliate with Avoya Travel and maintain it as well as add to it.”
The phones have rarely stopped ringing since Marini started two years ago, particularly during the heavy Europe escorted group tour booking season from January to March, a period when she works seven days a week. “Last year was unbelievable,” she said. “Everything clicked.”
For Marini, Avoya’s Live Leads suits her business needs. “I did not get into being a home-based agent to run my own business. I really enjoy this because I am matched with clients. I don’t really have to go after my own clients. I don’t have a website, only the one through Avoya.” That website is www.avoyatravel.com/experts/mollymarini.
While Marini sticks primarily with Avoya Travel’s preferred vendors, she is not limited to the agency’s preferred products. She typically receives calls or emails from clients looking for a European escorted program and having no idea what type of tour or river cruise.
“When someone calls and is looking at visiting Europe, I usually ask them what type of travel they’ve done in the past,” she said. “I ask if they stay in American chain hotels. That usually tells me what type of program and whether they’d like a tour with small, European-style hotels or Marriott-type hotels.
“Then I ask what is important to them in Europe. Is it the history? The food? Then you try to narrow down what they want to see. You get people interested in quick pace and seeing everything and those focusing on a particular country. There are lots of questions to ask to get them on the right escorted tour with the right company.”
Marini focuses on the tour and river cruise companies she knows best (and which also happen to be Avoya’s preferred suppliers). Sales for 2012 so far look to be “way ahead of last year at this time,” she said.