Fams Are Number One Tool in Generating Caribbean Sales
by Kerry Tice /
While there are many factors that separate using a travel agent from making a direct booking, perhaps the one that holds the most weight for a traveler is trust.
With multiple destinations and a wide variety of cruise and hotel products to choose from, travel agents justly boast their worth in their ability to cut through the masses and qualify potential clients to the best of their ability – sending them where they themselves would want to go.
Critical to that effort is education. Product knowledge through experience is by far the most effective way for travel agents to sell any destination, which is why when asked in our recent Outlook on the Caribbean survey how suppliers and tourist boards can help travel agents sell more of the Caribbean, the vast majority replied “More fam trips!”
By a more than two to one margin, travel agents surveyed said fams are the best tool in generating more sales from the agency community.
“Selling travel is ultimately a sales position but a true professional has to experience the product. Clients always ask if you’ve ever been there and nothing sells better than saying – ‘Yes, I have visited or stayed there with my family or during a work trip,’” said Roy Gal, a travel agent veteran of 18 years with Memories Forever Travel Group.
“Fams give you the opportunity to explore multiple resorts and chains, try breakfast, lunch and dinner at different properties and ultimately, the best comparison. Fams are not just about resorts, some provide you an excursion or two so you can recommend them to your clients – and provide great pictures and videos.”
Throwing in some extra advice to fellow agents, Roy adds, “nothing sells better than your own pictures, having a ready-to-send album and a review of a resort or tour helps you close that sale.”
Websites: Reality or Fiction?
When asked what’s stopping agents from selling the Caribbean effectively, over half of all agents (59%) said hotel standards and conditions of hotels can provide a barrier while 56% noted both service standards and perceptions of food quality provided “some challenges.”
While sub-standard hotels are an unavoidable factor, the ability to decipher those standards often comes down to first-hand knowledge, which again leads back to fams.
One agent who responded to our survey commented that hotels need to do a better job of keeping their websites current, saying “up to date information and pictures to represent their websites is huge! I have not recommended resorts based on the website and then attended fams all to find out the resort looks nothing like the out of date pictures.”
Kate Leas-Clisson, owner of Escape the Ordinary Travel, said that while reading spec sheets on resort facts and figures gives an agent some idea of dining venues, room sizes, resort amenities and distance to the airport, it “really doesn’t give us the feel of the resort, the quality of the food, the service and friendliness of the staff, the wait times at restaurants and bars, proximity and availability of excursions from the resort.
“Fam trips to the Caribbean are so important because although we are selling the island and what makes the island unique, most of our client’s time is spent at a resort. If we can’t identify which resort and region based on qualifying the client, it makes it nearly impossible to weed out the properties that don’t fit.”
Leas-Clisson added that visiting an island also gives an agent a feel for how safe it is for a client to explore on their own, eat and drink off property or rent a car. “Each island has a unique culture and geography and we need to know how those things will fit our clients. For example, ‘Is the island LBGTQ friendly? Is it rocky or hilly and if so, can it accommodate a client with a disability?’ At the resort how confidently can we tell our client their dietary needs can be met? This all comes from experiencing and visiting the resorts and islands first hand. Many resorts are owned by the government and leased to resort brands and frequently change hands, and along with all the new builds, this makes updating our knowledge imperative by repeat visits so we remain the expert on the destination.”
For more details on this comprehensive research on the Caribbean market – a study sponsored by Norwegian Cruise Line, Regent Seven Seas Cruises and Oceania Cruises - read and download the full the report by clicking here.