Home-Based Travel Agent Forum, October 17 -19

I’m heading to Boston in October to participate in the Home-Based Travel
Agent Forum, sponsored by OSSN and managed by the Travel Show Marketing
Group. If you’ve never been to one of these events, why not make this one
 your first? Not only would I love to have the chance to meet you, but you’ll
 get a whole lot more out of the experience than just my hearty handshake.

Those of you who have my course know how pumped I am about the many
 continuing education and networking opportunities that are available to 
home-based travel agents. Many of them are small-scale and local, usually 
sponsored by a supplier. Then there are the regular meetings, sometimes
 monthly, sometimes farther apart, that are organized by local OSSN 
chapters around the country (there are more than 80).

But the Home-Based Travel Agent Forum is the granddaddy of them all. You
 will seldom have the opportunity to rub shoulders with so many heavy 
hitters, starting with OSSN stalwarts like OSSN founder and president Gary
 Fee and Anita Pagliasso, who has made it her mission to help home-based
 travel agents achieve the level of success that she has enjoyed.

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Turn Single Bookings Into Groups

Most of us are perfectly happy to book a couple on a nice cruise, especially if it’s on a luxury cruise line.

But what if you could turn that booking and every other one like it into a  group? If you say that’s impossible . . . well, your probably right. But with the right mindset you may be able to create more groups than you think you can.

First of all, there’s what I call the “you want friends with that?” ploy. I hope those of you who have my course are already using it.

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More Good News For Travel and Travel Agents

I have long maintained (and history has backed me up on this) that travel is remarkably recession-proof. People may take different vacations, shorter vacations, but for most Americans vacations are necessities rather than options.

So I was pleased to note some recent news reports that show that, even in a time when politicians and pundits are screaming that the sky is falling, Americans continue to travel and take vacations. Hmmm. Maybe they want to get away from those politicians and pundits!

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The Best of Home-Based Travel Agent Newsletter, Vol 1

Best of HBTA Vol 1There have been over 200 issues of the “Home-Based Travel Agent Newsletter” since I started it I can’t remember how long ago.

That adds up to a lot of articles. I never archived the newsletter online because much of the content was time-specific and I didn’t want to confuse people who might stumble on out of date information thanks to a Google search.

But I realized that a lot of the articles didn’t have an “expiration date” and many only needed minor edits to make them timely once again.

So I decided to gather together to best of the material in the newsletter and make it available in a convenient ebook format via Amazon’s Kindle store. Here’s the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Home-Based-Travel-Agent-Newsletter-ebook/dp/B005C5T9O6/

If you don’t have a Kindle, that’s no longer the insurmountable problem it was a few years ago. You can get a free Kindle app that will let you read Kindle books on your computer, iPad, or smartphone.

I hope you find the material useful and, if you do, I hope you’ll leave a review on Amazon. Thanks.

Join HomeTravelAgency.com On Facebook

HomeTravelAgency.com and The Home-Based Travel Agent Success Course now have a “fan page” on Facebook.

It’s another way to stay in touch and join the conversation. To join in, just point your browser to . . .

http://www.facebook.com/hometravelagency

. . . and click the Like button. See you there!

About That Book On Amazon

I recently received an email from someone asking me for free advice about a business idea. He said he was interested in investing in The Home-Based Travel Agent Success Course, but was considering buying one of my books he saw on Amazon because, after all, it looked similar and was cheaper.

Two points:

First, if you are now or plan on becoming a home-based travel agent, please, please, please NEVER approach Supplier A for assistance and then mention that you might very well take your business to Supplier B or C because they seem to offer pretty much the same thing for less money. That is no way to win share of mind with your colleagues in the industry.

Now in my correspondent’s defense, he might not have known that if he purchases a long out of print book on Amazon I will receive zero financial benefit. But even so, how was this supposed to make me feel?

It didn’t make me feel much like answering his question, that’s for sure. But let me share with you what I shared with him about that book on Amazon.

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How Many Twitter Accounts Do You Have?

Most people have just one Twitter account. And for most people that could be quite enough.

The problem is, as your list of contacts grows your “Timeline” gets crowded with tweets and it is very possible that you might miss tweets from clients that you should be responding to.

So I would like to suggest that, as a home-based travel agent, you consider having two Twitter accounts. For lack of better terminology we might call them “Incoming” and “Outgoing.”

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The Truth About Cheap Flights

In the Home-Based Travel Agent Success Course I call it the “cheap travel trap” and I hope I’ve helped more than a few would-be travel agents avoid it.

But for those of you who are not yet convinced, may I submit in evidence the video below. Fair warning: some of the language is a bit, shall we say, colorful. But somehow, in an Irish accent, it’s rather charming.
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Americans Are Bullish on Leisure Travel

Leisure travel is back!

Over half of Americans will take at least the same number of trips this year as they did last year. More than a third plan on taking more trips. Only 13% said they’d take fewer trips, while 62% said they have already taken one leisure trip so far in 2011.

These are just a few of the results of a poll taken by a major franchisor of bricks-and-mortar travel agencies and reported in the travel trade press.

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Alert Your Clients to Enhanced Airport Security

Recently, I took a weekend trip to visit family. Before I boarded the plane, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) treated me to both a trip through the “porno scannerand an “enhanced pat-down.”

Welcome to the post-bin-Laden era of airline travel.

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