Super Agent: Susan Mazur Reder Offers Tips For New Travel Agents

When your Mom owns a travel agency, travel is in your blood.

At least that’s how it seems to Susan Mazur Reder, who was helping out in her Mom’s office in Los Angeles by the time she was in junior high. In college she organized ski trips for her friends; when she graduated she got a job at Westwind Travel, “writing tickets by hand and calling the airlines direct” before the advent of GDSs.  

Fast forward to today, and no matter the lens through which you look, Reder has come a long way. She is now the managing partner of the Woodland Hills, CA, branch in partnership with FROSCH, the $1.5 billion global agency. A member of Signature since 1989, she’s been a member of the marketing committee and headed a top-producing branch dedicated to luxury travel “for many, many years.” 

Reder’s marketing prowess has surely helped her agency grow. When she first bought the agency with a friend, “it might have done a couple of million, and our goal was to make $5 million,” she said. “Now we’re at 10 times that much, both leisure and corporate, but mostly high-end leisure.” 

In addition to the brick-and-mortar agency, she hosts a luxury website called LuxuryCruiseExperts.com, as well as Luxury Cruise and Vacation Experts pages on Facebook. “We did get a lot of leads and bookings from that, though now we’re competing against the big online companies,” she said. 

Making it in the luxury market
To succeed in the luxury market, Reder believes, “you have to be somewhat well-traveled to understand the idiosyncrasies of the luxury traveler, the best hotels, whom to call to help with an FIT. You have to have those personal relationships. It just takes time. You can’t just put your pocketbook in front of the luxury market; it’s really understanding what the luxury traveler wants and needs, and whom to choose as your partner to form wonderful itineraries. You have to be knowledgeable; you have to take courses and learn from the tourism offices and seminars and online training; you have to try to get to some of those places.” 

Another good way to learn is to participate in workshops from your consortium, and sales meetings and fam trips. “You have to be proactive and get involved in organizations like ASTA’s Young Professionals Group. “ 

Being young is hardly a drawback in the travel industry, she says—and certainly her own experience shows how true that is. “There are plenty of young people who have done plenty of traveling, and they are a really great base. Nowadays you can make some nice money if you are a good salesperson, if you don’t just sit behind a desk, if you have a personality and are engaging and very active on social media.”  

As for her own business, she continues to focus on the customer. “I know what my travelers want and what they don’t, the kind of places they like to stay in and whom to contact if I’ve never been to an area they want to visit. I just used Heritage Tours, for example, for an FIT trip to Morocco and Spain because they just do a remarkable job and make me look like a superstar.” 

Nowawdays it’s very difficult to grow unless you are affiliated with a large company or have some special niche, she said. You need the IT, the negotiating power, and the back-office support that helps hold down your overhead.  

Perhaps the biggest challenge in this people-oriented business is finding and training good agents, Reder said. She has had some success recently through the hospitality program at the University of California at Northridge’s internship program, which has brought in two good young agents she has hired full-time. She is hoping that, like her, they will take that youthful eagerness and passion for travel, and harness them into the marketing and sales skills that make a business succeed. 

“We are trying to get younger people in here all the time,” she said. “But we also have a requirement that you have to produce a certain amount of business to work here.”