How One Travel Advisor Built Her Business by Putting Relationships to Work
by Marilee Crocker /
When travel advisor Liz Henry began selling travel in 2015, she brought with her nearly 15 years of experience in nonprofits and education. Now she’s calling on the relationship-building skills honed in those years to grow her travel business in the direction of her vision.
Henry is an independent contractor in Greater Denver who specializes in active and adventure travel, selling under the name Compass & Globe Travel. While FITs currently account for most of her volume, her vision is to build a hosted groups business that drives 50 percent to 80 percent of sales. Planning 10 group trips a year just feels way more manageable than planning a hundred FITs, she told Travel Market Report.
Cultivating relationships and partnership opportunities has been at the heart of Henry’s approach to selling travel from the outset. “That comes from my background in the nonprofit world, where so much is focused on community engagement. To me, everybody's a partner – let’s see where the leverage points are and how it can be mutually beneficial,” she said.
Getting started in travel
But first Henry had to learn how to be a travel advisor. Early on, she enrolled in the Active & Adventure Specialist training program offered by Travel Leaders Network and the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA). For a newcomer, it’s a good first move. “The structure of these specialist programs gives you a path to follow as you’re getting oriented. It builds your foundation.”
Pairing that learning with opportunities to meet face-to-face with other industry members is also key, she said. For Henry, that has meant connecting with suppliers through ATTA, especially with the small “hyper-local” suppliers who can deliver the kind of trips her clients can’t find on their own.
At her first ATTA event, the 2016 Adventure Travel World Summit (ATWS) in Alaska, Henry met a small supplier from Croatia who described the country’s national parks to her and suggested that when a client requests Tuscany, Henry could recommend Croatia instead. Sometime later, a couple asked her to design a trip around trail running, perhaps to Italy or South America. Henry suggested Croatia instead and called on her new supplier contact to create an itinerary and source lodging in local apartments, since the couple liked to cook. “They had a fantastic trip,” she said.
Henry turned to another supplier she met at ATTA in Alaska to handle her first hosted-group trip, a 10-night culinary tour of Thailand and Cambodia scheduled for this November.
Creating mutual value
In building relationships, Henry makes it a point to show the other party that she will make the partnership valuable for them. When she finds a supplier she likes, she recommends them in online conversations with other agents.
After having positive experiences with the Australia/New Zealand supplier, Travel2, she went one step further and organized a lunch meeting with the supplier’s rep and other Denver area independent contractors for her host agency, Travel Quest. No doubt the gesture greased the wheels when Henry asked the rep last summer if he would be willing to help her host a wine and information session in Minnesota.
The relationships she has nurtured, including those forged at local meetups and Travel Leaders Network conferences, also have opened doors to trip invitations and other learning opportunities, including two fams to Australia and Chile last year. “That’s stuff I can do because I have those relationships,” she said.
Focusing on hosted groups
This year, Henry is focused on developing her hosted groups business. “My idea is to work with people who have specialized skills to find that added value that travelers can’t get on their own.”
In addition to the Southeast Asia culinary trip, which will be hosted by a chef who developed a following when he owned a Thai restaurant in Puerto Rico, she’s also working on a photography trip to Costa Rica that will be led by a Denver-area National Geographic photographer whom she met at a local event hosted by the Chilean National Tourism Board.
Henry is also teaming up with a healthcare-focused nonprofit on two hosted trips that will be designed specifically to appeal to its fundraising audience (while also being sold to the public). For each trip, Henry plans to give the nonprofit one spot at cost, to be auctioned off at a fundraising event. Plus, she’ll make a donation of $100 or so for every other person at the fundraisers who signs up for the trip.
“It’s that idea of leveraging partnerships and building something that is strategic and has a social impact aspect to it,” Henry said.