In 2014, Agents Resolve to Improve

A new year means yet another opportunity to set goals and work toward improving yourself, your business and your community.

Travel Market Report asked members of the travel agency community about their New Year’s resolutions and how they hope to improve business in 2014. Here’s a sampling.

Execute plans with discipline
“Our New Year’s resolution at Atlas Travel focuses on what we will do for our employees, community and customers. We will continue to enhance our performance management and employee engagement and continue to hire the best resources in the travel and meetings business as well as the technology field.

“Another area we would like to enhance and evolve is our corporate social responsibility; we have engaged an internal team to further our endeavors in 2014. With the right discipline, we have a lot of plans to execute in 2014 that will continue our growth and keep us relevant in the industry and into the future.”
– Lea Cahill, CTC, COO, Atlas Travel, Milford, Mass.

Operate from a vision of caring
“My New Year’s resolution for Silvestri Travel is to continue with the personalized service that we are known for. I am planning to operate from a basic vision of giving and caring about my clients’ needs and desires. Our vision includes more private, small group tours. I will also continue my relationship with Gateway Rotary Club of Sarasota in order to keep giving back to the community and internationally.

“I’m looking forward to increasing overall revenues a substantial amount, to maintain our growth not only in terms of revenue but expanding our client base worldwide.”
– Lisa Silvestri, CTC, ECC, Silvestri Travel, Sarasota, Fla.

Work with the right suppliers
“My resolution for this year is to remain focused on both clients and suppliers who are easy to do business with and with whom I make money. Plain and simple. Life is too short to stress over unprofitable business. Though it is sometimes hard to keep this resolution in place, I am slowly and surely finding the strength and the courage to stick by it.”
– Nancy Yoffe, ECCS, Cruise Planners, Spartanburg, S.C.

Grant more wishes for children
“Every vacation dream that we help deliver is such a beautiful reminder of why we are in this business; we want to make even more dream vacations come true in 2014. With the support of our business partners, I want to grant more wishes than ever before for children with life-threatening medical conditions through our partnership with Make-A-Wish. I hope for a very positive 2014, not only for World Travel Holdings, but for our employees, home-based agents and travel partners.”
– David Crooks, senior vice president, product & operations, World Travel Holdings

Target clients with better data
“Our resolution is to get rid of the junky data in our system and use healthy data instead. We have a platform to go out there and aggressively target consumers and show our value proposition. I think the No. 1 priority for every single travel advisor is to improve their merchandizing, using customer data.”
– Matthew Upchurch, CEO, Virtuoso