Agents should be thankful of special requests, not mock them

Travel Weekly are running a competition for travel agents to submit their “weird client requests”. Full competition details. There is £50 (100 USD) of Marks and Spencers vouchers up for grabs - and the competition is still open for a few more weeks.

From this weeks Travel Weekly magazine:

Some questions already submitted for the competition include:

• Does the hotel on the Costa Brava have a private washing line on the balcony?
• What size are the steps into the transfer coach?

While the competition has good intentions (and everyone likes a good giggle every now and then) - I believe this attitude towards client requests will not serve the travel agent in the longer term.

Standard bookings (those without complex needs) will, now and in the future, be handled by customers booking online. Therefore bookings with special requests or unusual questions will become the norm for high street travel agents…. so agents should be fostering the concept that special requests are to be welcomed as this is where their future business lies. Agents should be chasing these trickier customers - as these customers can be converted to be loyal over the longer term.

For example, CanBeDone, a UK based travel company, specialise in selling travel to disabled customers.

The real problem that travel agents have with these questions and requests is that it requires much greater product knowledge and a higher levels of customer service than they are currently using to sell standard holiday products. Special requests expose this lack of knowledge to clients - who then - quite correctly - go and book with tour operators directly.

Tour operators generally do have the product knowledge at a detailed level - as it is their product. They will know how large the steps are for the transfer coach. They will likely know about the washing line facilities at the hotel.

Back to the Austrian beach holiday request…..
I found one! The Seegasthof Hotel Lackner has a nice little beach - on Lake Mondsee!

Other websites
OK - I admit - I did struggle to find an Austrian beach holiday….. but I did turn up a few other travel websites who would be willing to sell me one:

CentralR.com - who describes my potential Austrian beach holiday as “With the fresh sea breeze and a cold cocktail in your hand you really know you’re on holiday. Try our Austrian beach hotels for those hotels in Austria located in special spots beside the sea.”

Here is the photo they use to promote their Austrian beach holidays:

Details on this holiday from CentralR 

RealTravel.com  - who’s tagline is “Real People, Real Advice, Real Experiences”….. have a wonderful photo of Byron Bay, Austria . What was that we said before about the quality of user generated content? Hummm…

GeoPassage.com - These guys have a nice presentation for Austrian beach holidays:

The web page clearly states “We do not have any tours that are both in Austria and Beach. The following is a list of tours that are either in Austria or Beach”. The top 3 tours from those 2 categories are then listed.

What is also nice about their webpage is their URL structure. Here it is:

http://www.geopassage.com/travel/Austria/Beach/tours.htm 

Within this URL they have: 

• Travel - a strong keyword to optimise on.
• Austria - category #1
• Beach - category #2
• tours.htm - an important keyword - like travel - which is strong to optimise on

Actually, with current SEO knowledge and page presentation, you can’t get much better than this page from GeoPassage. Full marks.

Final thought
Even President George Bush confuses Austria with Australia…. so if he confuses the two - then clients will confuse the two as well.

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