Shopping Mall Kiosk Nets New Clients, Sales

Want to increase your sales and continually expand your customer base with almost no out-of-pocket investment? Open up a kiosk in a shopping mall.

That’s exactly what Morrie and Bev Frazier did when they set up a sales kiosk in the Sierra Vista Mall in Clovis, Calif.

The Fraziers opened their CruiseOne franchise in 1995 and ran it as a home-based operation for the first six years. Then in 2001 one of their associates (CruiseOne’s term for independent contractors) suggested renting space inside a local mall. The Fraziers were intrigued.

“We realized that there’s no way that we could know everybody who wants to go cruising,” Morrie told Travel Market Report. The mall presence seemed to be a good opportunity to expand the agency’s presence in the community, “and those are people we probably never would have had contact with.”

The Fraziers knew they had made a wise choice when they sold three cruises on the first day the kiosk was open. Since then, the agency’s associates have operated the kiosk – which is a 10-by-10 four-sided booth with space in the middle for travel consultations – at least four days a week, every week.

“We’ve gotten a lot of repeat and referral business from it, like two to four times over,” Morrie said. “They do come back. They may not come back to the mall the second time, but they call the associate at home and do their bookings with them.”

Suppliers Foot the Bill
Every piece of business that comes through the kiosk is pure profit for the Fraziers and the associates who run the business, according to Morrie. The reason: supplier payments cover the cost of renting the kiosk.

“If they [suppliers] want us to put out their brochures and advertise their promotions for them, then they have to pay us money,” Morrie said. “So the suppliers are paying for the whole thing.”

Participating suppliers include Holland America Line, Celebrity Cruises, Princess, Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean, Disney Cruise Line, and Funjet, he said. 

These suppliers have been covering costs for the kiosk from almost the first month. “We told them, ‘We’d love to put your brochures out for you,’ and they volunteered. Carnival was the first. They said, ‘We would love to pay for you to make sure that you have our brochures and mention our promotions.’ And that opened the door for the rest of them. It works out very well for us, because there’s no out-of-pocket money.”

The Fraziers have a few practical pointers for travel sellers interested in exploring a similar setup.

– Location: “The main thing is they’ve got to find a spot where there’s a lot of traffic that goes by.”

– Price: “Negotiate a good price. Work out a deal with the mall.”

– Think outside the (mall) box: “It doesn’t have to be a mall. It could be a beauty parlor where there’s always lots of people coming and going. You could pay a little bit of rent and put a card table in the corner during certain hours of the day. It’s a great place because customers are just sitting there getting their hair done and you could just talk to them about travel.”

– Someone has to operate it: “We don’t have time to work the kiosk. We’re blessed to have associates that are willing to do it instead.”