Biz Agency Offers Tours for Chambers of Commerce

Successful travel agents know that their own hometowns are often the best sources of business.

Now Adelman Travel, a predominantly corporate agency in Milwaukee, has landed a substantial piece of business from hundreds of hometowns across the U.S. – via the chambers of commerce that thrive in just about every municipality in the nation.

Last year, Adelman acquired a company called Chamber Discoveries, which since 2008 has created and marketed tours to chambers of commerce around the U.S.

Networking for businesses
“We saw an opportunity, although we had not done chamber business in the past,” said Bob Chaiken, COO of Adelman Travel, which is a member of Virtuoso.

“We saw that more and more chambers were starting to do international travel as a way to bring members together to share common experiences. Rather than just seeing one another at a monthly meeting or lunch, these members can really get to know each other over the course of a seven- or 10-day trip.

“These chambers enjoy not only the networking and educational elements of the tours, but they can be used as revenue-generators,” he told Travel Market Report.

Today’s increasingly global economy also is fueling the growth of international tours for chamber groups, Chaiken said. “Businesspeople want to visit businesses in other countries.”

Hundreds of chambers
Adelman has reached out to state and regional organizations of chambers to access their members, and Chamber Discoveries now works with hundreds of local chambers, representing cities as small as a couple of thousand people up to large cities.

Interestingly, it’s not always the largest communities that generate the most business.
“You would be surprised,” said Chaiken. “It might be the smallest town that is able to get together 30 or 40 people to do a tour because they all know each other so well.”

Other travel agents can sell Chamber Discoveries tours at net rates. “We would like to have more agents playing a role in working with their local chamber of commerce on our tours,” Chaiken said.

Marketing support
Chamber Discoveries works with individual chambers to do as much marketing of the tours, including on social media, as a chamber wants.

The tour operator will supply web graphics and a custom brochure as well as a web page for the specific tour. An in-person presentation to promote the trip also can be arranged.

Although targeted at chamber of commerce members, there are no restrictions on who joins the trips. Nonmembers sign up because the trips are good deals and an opportunity to travel with friends and family; spouses usually go.

About the tours
What differentiates the tours themselves is that they often include networking with business counterparts overseas. Chamber Discoveries finds the contacts and puts them together with the traveling chamber groups.

Just about all the trips are international, and there have been tours to Tuscany, Ireland and Thailand as well as Danube River cruises.

Some chambers tour as often as twice a year, while others tour once a year or less. Groups can be as small as 10 people; small chamber groups might be combined when there’s a shared destination.

Travelers who sign up are often affluent businesspeople, and the tours tend to be upscale and highly customized. Typically the tours include almost everything as far as transportation, meals, etc.

Chamber Discoveries runs as an independent division, said Chaiken, although it draws on the resources of Adelman Travel, “which gives us a little more depth.”

Asked if Adelman was looking at other niche leisure opportunities, Chaiken said, “not yet.”