f clients are staying home watching
the war on TV, what are the nation's travel agents doing?
Many still are selling or planning travel, counseling clients
and dealing with cancellations, but they also have a bit more "down
time" than usual these days and are using it to get creative or
deal with mundane housekeeping chores.
At Forest Lake Travel in Columbia, S.C., a Virtuoso agency,
president Joseph Bouknight said his phone activity is "medium," so
he and his staff have been taking time to clean up the agency's
databases.
Even before the war started, Forest Lake Travel was making a few
changes in response to hard times and jittery travelers.
For a 10-day Celebrity cruise to the Caribbean out of
Charleston, S.C., in January, for example, Bouknight said he got a
group of 95 clients together and put them on chartered buses to the
port and included that in the pricing. Bouknight said he didn't
have to deal with the airlines, and his clients didn't have to deal
with airports.
He said the agency is doing other things it has never done
before. He has plans for a group fishing trip to Alaska for the
summer, and he aims to plan and operate some "bus trips that were
haven't done before," all to originate in his local market.
Also, at the beginning of the year, the agency started shopping
the Web for clients and charging fees for the service.
Bouknight added the agency is calling clients after trips more
frequently than in the past.
Wayne Taleff, president of Talgood Travel in Cincinnati, an
agency with about $3.2 million in sales, said his phones are
quiet.
Business travelers appear to be taking a "wait-and-see
attitude," he said, but fortunately, his travelers are not
canceling previous bookings.
Taleff said he's trying to use the down time to work on
additional ways "to drive business through the door. I have a file
that is nothing but ideas, but now I have the time to work on
them."
Talgood Travel does a lot of honeymoon business and is working
on getting more of that.
The agency also is going ahead with a previously planned Sandals
Night event and is putting more time into making it pay off through
more aggressive promotion. Taleff said one staffer recently sent
130 e-mails in one day, rather than the typical 10.
Also, Taleff is focusing on developing his group business
because people "feel safer" in groups, he said. He created a group
golf trip to Ireland for the fall, working with a country club and
a group of previous customers.
Although few agencies are hiring these days, Taleff said he just
replaced a departed part-timer with a full-time employee, which
"frees me up to get groups."
He said he expects 2003 to be "in the doldrums" much like 2002
but looks for 2004 to be a great year.
Billie Ruff, owner of Travel Cafe in Billings, Mont., a $4
million agency, said the phones have been quieter since the war
began.
However, the volume at her agency is where it was this time last
year, so she regards herself as "very lucky."
Ruff said that perhaps business has remained steady because
"Montanans refuse to allow the world to change what they are
doing."
She said the quieter times in the office have enabled her to
devote more time to concluding a deal to acquire $1.75 million
Action Travel in Hardin, 40 miles to the east.
Ruff also is taking advantage of the time to promote the
agency's corporate online-booking product.
She has been making the rounds doing demos for clients.
"For domestic travel, I'm not seeing much of a change, but
overseas, I have had a couple of cancellations," said Irene Hunt,
owner of Hunt Travel Service, a home-based agency in Poughkeepsie,
N.Y.
Hunt said the war prompted two clients to cancel trips to Italy.
Even cruise clients are apprehensive, she said.
But despite the fact the phones aren't ringing as much as they
used to, Hunt said she still has plenty to do.
"On my downtime, I'm trying to put some groups together," she
said, while keeping her accounting up to date.
Hunt said she even considered squeezing in a familiarization
trip to Nassau, Bahamas.
Strong Travel Service in Dallas still is busy with bookings for
Mexico, Colorado ski resorts and other destinations, but owner
Nancy Strong said she was hit with "a number of cancellations"
right after the war started.
"One in particular blew me away. It was to Hawaii. It was a good
booking. I was so surprised [the clients] were canceling 10 days in
Hawaii. They were just too nervous about being away from home.
Everybody has a different comfort level."
Nevertheless, Strong felt that if clients would cancel out of
Hawaii, they also would drop out of other trips. She was right.
But Strong said although her agency has lost some significant
bookings since the war began, she is not considering laying off any
of her 15 employees.
"I am concerned, but I have an amazing, incredible staff," she
said. "I will do all possible to keep everyone on board to the very
end."
In the meantime, Strong said, she is encouraging her agents to
take advantage of the downtime to take fam trips.
"My assistant is in London and Paris this week, and this is a
good time for her to be gone because we are not busy, and I can
handle this," she said.
But Strong had mixed feelings about where her son went. "My son,
who runs the agency with me, is in Rwanda trekking gorillas.
"I said to him, 'Stay home.' Between Rwanda and Iraq, I don't
need all this gray hair."