Is This the Next Generation of Travel Advisors?

Standing out from the crowd and delivering a profitable standard of customer service are critical for today’s successful travel advisors. With the myriad of travel planning options available to the average traveler, today’s newest travel agents need to create a distinct value proposition and understand consumer behaviors to close more business and to have more profitable leisure sales.

While the path to success for new travel advisors is varied, entering the business with a few years’ experience can give an agent a big step up, and Dolores Luna Kosydar, a newly minted Tzell Travel Group independent contractor (IC), is leveraging more than a decade of professional preparation to get her travel agency off the ground.

“This is the profile we look to join us,” said Marat Shkandin, Tzell senior trainer. “Dolores is part of the small but growing minority of newcomers with professional business experience elsewhere in travel, but they want the freedom of entrepreneurship to express their passion of what a travel business can be.”

For example, Shkandin said, Luna Kosydar had a working business plan before she joined Tzell’s travel advisor boot camp training program for new agents. “She had a good idea of what it would take to make the income she wants from this business, and the cash she needs to cover her living expenses between now and when her plan is creating that income. Not a lot of new agents understand all of this.”

Shkandin also praised Luna Kosydar for her pursuit of a brand, “Lobby Boy Travel,” that would distinguish her business from others. The brand and her website refers to the character in the 2014 movie, “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

In the movie, Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous hotel from the fictional Republic of Zubrowka, befriends the lobby boy Zero Moustafa. The sometimes-zany and whimsical plot reinforces Gustave’s core belief of serving the hotel’s guests with quiet, flawless service.

“Gustave and Zero are invisible; they anticipate the guest’s needs,” said Luna Kosydar, who worked 12 years in the hotel industry. “All of that was my job description in the hotel industry. All of that still translates to my days now as an agent.”

The Lobby Boy Travel ideal client “is someone who invests in their travel experiences,” Luna Kosydar said. “They are too time-starved to plan travel to their own standards, but want to entrust that investment with someone who gets them, and the importance they place on the experiences they want.”

Luna Kosydar earned her B.S. in Hotel and Tourism Management at New York University, graduating in 2009. She went to work at New York City’s Carlyle Hotel, and over 12 years, worked in operations, sales and marketing, and guest relations. Her employers included Four Seasons Hotels, the Loews Regency, and the Library Hotel.

“You can see by the way she handles herself that she’s worked with the traveling public in all kinds of situations. I love the way she thinks about customer service, and the way she sees the [travel advisor] profession distinguishing its value,” Shkandin said. “It’s great when people come in with that excitement.”

Because her employers were 4- and 5-star properties, Luna Kosydar dealt mostly with luxury agents, including advisors working with the ProTravel International and Tzell brands. “I had personal and professional relationships with so many different agents during my hotel career. They were always calling me about their guests, and the requirements they promised to their clients,” she said.

“It wasn’t just about what room they were booked into, but what time of the day was best for someone who wanted to visit the Egyptian Room (at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), or ensuring their car transfers gave the client enough time to get to their dinner reservation. Delivering on that level of detail was a part of why those guests booked with that travel advisor.”

A dream AND a plan
As her hotel career progressed and she worked more frequently with high-end travel agents, Luna Kosydar started to craft a plan for becoming a luxury travel advisor, with a brand that would focus on discreet, added services that anticipated client needs.

She says it took about two years of developing the plan – as well as listing out the pros and cons of leaving a job with a regular salary – to get close to a final decision. The process reached its climax when Luna Kosydar and her husband went on their honeymoon in Cambodia and Thailand. “He was remarking about all of the details I put into planning the trip, and told me, ‘You can do this.’”

While Luna Kosydar had the inspiration and branding falling into place, she also knew that there was a lot about being a travel advisor that she didn’t know. Part of the reason why she chose Tzell was her interest in the company’s “Boot Camp” training for new agents.

“So much about being an agent was new to Dolores, like charging fees,” Shkandin said. “We also knew that like most other agents, only over time, with experience working with clients and defining her value, would she start to value herself enough to earn the income she deserves for her skills and expertise. That’s normal for when you start out in pretty much any business. You undervalue yourself.”

Luna Kosydar agrees. “I was probably looking at my initial income naively, and today [she opened Lobby Boy Travel about six months ago], it’s not near what I thought it would be. But I’m on par with people in their first year. Maybe a little ahead.”

Like most new agents, the bulk of Luna Kosydar’s leads are family, friends and referrals. She’s “dabbling” in digital marketing, and starting to earn a return on that investment, but realizes she needs to be more aggressive in marketing to new prospects outside her current sphere of influence.

“This is why I love Tzell so much. I have a community of colleagues, some of them in the business 15-20 years, who I can ask questions to, to help me expand my business,” she said.

Shkandin said the majority of new agents he sees have “some kind of business plan,” but that when they finally progress through the Boot Camp, they start to see where that plan’s strengths and weaknesses lie. “They have an idea of whether their goals are achievable, but they don’t know the actual numbers and how the math works until they get deep into it.”

“We spend a decent amount of time in the training program talking about how transactions flow, the seasonality of the business, when commissions post to your bank account. We want people to realize there will be a gap in your income and you need to figure out how you will deal with that. Do you have enough savings, or other cash flow, to hold you over until your travel business picks up?”

“Once you get into the training program and we show you the real numbers, and how to do the actual math, that’s when new agents start to understand they are business owners,” Shkandin said. “They understand whether the niche they would like to serve is too small, or too broad.

When a new agent forecasts an average transaction size, and they understand what a typical commission will look like for that client, “you can start to back out how many sales you need to close, and then how many leads will you need to generate that level of sales. From that comes an action plan,” he said.

“Dolores’ familiarity with travel sales and marketing gave her an advantage. Her numbers weren’t perfect when she first came to us, but she had the right mindset to listen, adapt, and make a commitment to her business. When you write all of this out in a plan, you realize, ‘These are my decisions, this is my plan, and it is on me to execute.’”

Luna Kosydar advises new agents like her to think long and hard about the financial transition out of a steady paycheck. During the Tzell Boot Camp, advisers like Shkandin “were there to look over my business plan and destroy it, and build it back up again,” she said. “They told me outright, ‘You’re not going to make that much in sales in your first year, so you need to plan.’”

“That means your business plan has to include a higher amount of revenue per transaction,” she added, “because your margin may not be high enough, given all of the unpaid time you spend on clients that book somewhere else.”

This also is the time that a lot of new agents realize the importance of charging fees, Shkandin finds. “Dolores was open to hearing that message, and understanding how she needed to rebuild her business plan around her decisions.”

Travel industry professionals can fill the gap for new agents
Shkandin advised other agencies and entrepreneurs looking to add ICs to look for future advisors from similar pools of current travel industry employees.

“Some people fall in love with travel when they’ve been in a role at, say, a hotel. But over time, they see that they need to transition into a small business owner role to feel more fulfilled. It’s a great place for us to look for new advisors to join the brotherhood,” he said.

“As a company, you have to keep your mind open to the type of advisor you bring in. If you box candidates in, you might miss that next big thinker in the industry ready to change it. And you want them in your company to have them there creating that change with you.”