What I Learned from Vancouver’s Best Travel Advisors
by Daniel McCarthy
MARRIOTT PARQ HOTEL, VANCOUVER, MARCH 8, 2023: Ambassador’s Program event.
Travel Market Report knows that education and industry networking are the cornerstones to your success and we are looking forward to coming together in March 2023 to provide an experience that will educate, energize, and inspire!
Join your top professional peers in the travel industry as you discover new and exciting ways to do what you love in 2023! Network with other agents, meet with suppliers, and attend sessions being led by industry leaders, sales experts, marketing experts and coaches to help streamline your business making you more profitable than ever.
The event provides an unparalleled opportunity for travel agents to connect with fellow travel professionals, participate in educational seminars and network with suppliers, all with the goal of growing their business.
Last week in Vancouver, the team at Travel Market Report celebrated its Travel Market Place conference at the JW Parq Marriott. The conference was the busiest TMP West ever, bringing out more than 250 agents and 100 supplier representatives for a two-day show.
On the day prior to the show’s opening, I had the incredible pleasure of sitting in amongst suppliers for our Ambassador program during the conference. The program brings 60-plus of Vancouver’s best travel advisors, vetted by the TMR team, together with 14 suppliers for three hours of small group meetings and then one-and-a-half hours of networking time over dinner and cocktails.
Being able to connect some of the area’s best travel advisors with suppliers, especially after the last three years we’ve had, is something the team looks forward to every year. And having the chance to sit in and talk to those advisors, was equally a great opportunity for the TMR team.
Here’s some of what we learned from those conversations:
1. Demand is Still flexible and ready to pay up.
The best bet for travelers is to book far out in advance, and advisors are doing whatever they can to communicate that to their clients, but that only goes so far.
5, There’s a New Way of Thinking
Travel advisors are no longer happy to simply go with the ebb and flow of the industry. Advisors are making things happen and the best ones are moving mountains in order to fit into new, profitable businesses.
I had one advisor during Ambassador night tell me about sitting down and learning how to book a charter jet after realizing that it would be cheaper to book a group’s travel via charter as opposed to business class seats. I had another tell me about diving deep into alternative destinations to Italy, building a portfolio of destinations they are able to offer to clients looking for Italy travel that is unavailable now because of lack of supply or high pricing.
