How Hotels Cement Agency Relationships

Travel Market Report spoke with executives from three hotel chains to find out how hotel chains and individual properties work to cement the agent-client-hotel relationship to create a loyal following.

All three executives emphasized the importance of the travel agent. “Working with travel agents is vital to our business, as they really are Banyan Tree’s ambassadors to our guests,” said David Woodward, Banyan Tree’s regional director, marketing–Eastern USA. “Travel agents are key to our success. They are the experts and specialists who have the greatest ability to influence travelers’ buying decisions.”

Terry Holmes, executive director of Red Carnation Hotels, said, “Travel agents are our lifeblood. I’ve always thought this way and I haven’t changed my mind.”

Julius Robinson, vice president of global sales intermediaries for Marriott, told TMR that from the time of the very first Marriott hotel, travel agents have represented a significant percentage of bookings. “We’ve always put travel agents in the forefront of how we do business. Even over the years, as our internal dot.com has grown and the online travel agencies have grown, the traditional travel agent is still a significant part of our business mix.”

Getting Personal

The three hoteliers concurred on the value of having general managers and/or sales managers develop relationships with agents and keep the doors of communication wide open. It’s a generally unspoken fact that travel agents favor the hotels and resorts where they know the general manager or the sales manager because this ensures that their clients will be treated well.

Holmes pointed out that at Red Carnation, after each of his monthly agent e-mails is sent, he gets many personal responses, and bookings invariably follow. With that philosophy in mind, Holmes said he also works hard to foster the relationship between the properties’ GMs or sales managers and travel agents. “One of the old sayings in London is ‘the best pub in town is where you’re best known.’ Everybody likes to be recognized.”

Holmes added that he’s trying to speed up the process, which sometimes takes several years. “So the things that we do—like putting a bottle of wine in clients’ rooms from the GM and agent—are to bring that relationship forward and make it happen early rather than after 10 or 15 reservations.” Not only is the now-happy client likely to revisit the travel agent that booked the stay, he notes, but the client will also want to revisit either the specific hotel they enjoyed or another property within the same brand.

Banyan Tree’s Woodward said, “Our luxury clientele rely on their travel agents for the best recommendations, which further reinforces our belief in having a truly collaborative partnership with our most loyal and supportive travel agents. This way we can work with them and ensure that their clients have unforgettable holiday experiences.”

Robinson pointed out that it is not always possible for the GM at every Marriott to have personal relationships with travel agents especially in locales where agents don’t do a lot of business because there are so many properties. However, he said, hotels and resorts in certain geographic areas, for example, Florida, Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean, see a lot of agent business and so develop closer relations.

“We’ve got resorts where our general managers know many travel agents and agencies by name and make individual calls on them on a regular basis. Clearly in our resort and leisure market our general managers work hard to develop relationships with travel agents,” Robinson said.

Realizing the benefit of these relationships, Marriott has recently created new regional sales positions within the company that are strictly focused on building partnerships with retail leisure travel agencies. “It’s in its infancy,” Robinson told TMR. “We just launched the Desert Southwest and D.C. Now we’re looking at other markets.”

Banyan Tree, with most of its hotels and resorts in Asia and two in Mexico, also relies on its sales team to build most of the personal relationships with agents. “Our USA sales team is very active in their local markets and develops close relationships with the travel agents who frequently send their clients to our resorts,” Woodward said. “It is very important to us to have this continued personal relationship with them and to better know their clients’ needs.”

However, he said, the company does endeavor to introduce property GMs to agents whenever possible. This past April, for example, Banyan Tree held a series of events in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York where top travel agents and Banyan Tree representatives and GMs were able to mix.
 
Robinson told TMR that Marriott hotels are “open to” calls or e-mails from travel agents with special requests, which he said are quite common. “Our reservations sales people on property, as well as our front-desk folks, are more than happy to take that information and try to do something special. We leave it up to the individual properties to determine what might be the best thing for them to do.”

Meanwhile, both Banyan Tree’s Woodward and Red Carnation’s Holmes said they “encourage special requests.”

“We always want to hear about the special requests of our guests in advance,” Woodward said. “We do everything we can to create the special moments that make the same guests come back to Banyan Tree time and time again.”

At Red Carnation, Holmes said, “It’s the best thing that can happen for all of us—the hotel, the agent and the client. We send out pre-arrival preference forms so agents can let us know what their clients’ likes are: favorite newspaper, colors. We try and match what we have to those likes and dislikes.”

Marriott’s Robinson added, “For us it’s all about the clients’ intent to return. And if they’ve had a great experience from the travel agent and we can provide a great experience on our end, they’re going to reciprocate four, five times over.” What’s more, he said, “What typically happens is that repeat customers who book through the same travel agency spend more money on the second trip, which is great for us.”

Related articles:

How travel sellers and hotels can work together to provide better client experiences (read article),

What agents really would like from the hotels (read article).

Next week: How hoteliers support and show appreciation for agents.