Traveling With Clients Is Thriving Niche for Calif. Agent
by Robin AmsterSelling and accompanying clients on trips to destinations she knows inside and out has proved to be a successful strategy for California travel agent Marianne Braly.
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Braly, who speaks Italian, French and Spanish, gives clients – ranging from singles to couples to small groups – an insider’s look at destinations.
She takes them to restaurants only the locals know, stores where the shopping is great but no English is spoken, and sights that are difficult to find. She provides special experiences clients wouldn’t otherwise have, eases train travel that’s confusing and intimidating for many clients and introduces them to local friends she’s made on her countless trips abroad.
Professional traveler
Braly has two business cards: one as owner of Now Voyager Travel in Huntington Beach, Calif., and another that says Travel with a Pro across the top and Professional Traveler under her name. Coming up with the latter title was not easy, she said.
“I can’t tell you how many dinner parties that I’ve been to where I’ve asked, ‘Can we brainstorm this and come up with a name for what I do?’” Braly said. “No one knows what to call it. Everything from escort to personal travel assistant to concierge came up, but none were right. Professional traveler gets the message across.”
Growth of her business
Raised in a family of entrepreneurs, Braly always wanted to own her own business. She bought the 12-year-old Now Voyager agency in 1995 and, as “the fastest way to grow,” acquired another nearby agency in 2000 and consolidated the business.
She has a staff of three and sales of $3.5 million to $4 million annually. About 40% of the business is corporate, mostly small companies, and the rest is FIT and group leisure travel to Hawaii, Mexico, Western Europe and Asia. Braly is a Travel + Leisure Magazine Mexico Expert.
Taking it a step further
Braly was looking for a new revenue stream when she escorted her first trip about four years ago. But she had other reasons for coming up with the new niche.
“I knew after 25 years of being in an office that I’d die if I had to continue to sit there. I needed to be out and doing things,” she said.
“A travel agent makes peoples’ trips special from a planning perspective. I took that a giant step further to show them a place in person,” she added. “People love a travel agent who really travels. The biggest bonus is to show them places from the inside in a way they couldn’t experience on their own.”
Not a tour operator
Braly doesn’t consider herself a tour operator or a tour guide. She books hotels through tour operators, although there are “bits and pieces” of trips she arranges herself.
And she often uses her own guides. “I am not a licensed tour guide,” she said. “I have no historical knowledge, for instance, but I can tell you every great place to eat and to shop and get you on and off trains.”
Most of the trips are for 10 days, although Braly has done some for up to three weeks. She designs itineraries around clients’ interests. These have included test driving a Ferrari, taking cooking classes or providing hard-to-get tickets for Christmas Eve at the Vatican.
Range of prices, group size
Braly offers trips at any price level depending on the budget, trip length and activities. She has booked both 200 Euro- and 400 Euro-a-night hotels in Rome. Her expenses are built into the tour price.
She has traveled with just one person and groups of six.
The client for the one-person trip was a single woman who didn’t have any friends who can travel with her on the kind of luxury trips she likes. She could afford the kind of luxury trip she wanted to take and she didn’t want to travel alone. There have also been older clients who didn’t want to be part of a group but weren’t comfortable traveling alone. For these clients especially, “I’m the answer,” Braly said.
Until now Braly has done most of the Professional Traveler trips for existing clients. Now she’s beginning to expand the business beyond that base by sending out press releases and communicating through social media. She is also launching a new agency website this fall.
