At Signature Travel Network’s Annual Conference, taking place this week at The Venetian in Las Vegas, CEO Alex Sharpe spoke about the importance of finding a specialisation as a travel advisor.
“Ultimately, what it (having a specialisation) does, is it brings people in so that then you and your agency have the opportunity to get their full travel wallet,” Sharpe said to an audience of 2,600 attendees, including 600 first-time attendees. He broke down his argument into four key points:
- Increasing efficiency
- Enhancing experiences
- Driving higher profitability
- Improving your reputation as an expert
Speaking to his first point, Sharpe said, “If you book one cruise line often, you know everything [about it].” By knowing a product or destination exceedingly well, it’s easier to book these trips for your clients, since there’s no learning curve.
It spills into the second point, too. “When you have those relationships and you can call on someone to help you through something, those enhanced experiences that you can create through our partners are what differentiate you form the internet or from another travel agent down the street,” said Sharpe.
Being an expert also allows you to charge higher fees, which drives higher profitability. “When you’re the expert,” Sharpe said, “you don’t have to be the best price; you have to be the best value.” He added: “When you have an expertise that exceeds everyone else—or a lot of people in that space—then you have to be able to charge for that value.”
From here, your reputation as an expert builds and it becomes a snowball effect, to a point. Through this credibility—within the industry and supplier partners, in the press, within your client base—you start to create additional leads, according to Sharpe. In short, he said, “You want to be known for something.”
And none of this is to say, don’t have some general expertise, too. As Sharpe mentioned up front, once you can bring in a client for that specific trip that you specialize in, then you can work on taking over all of their other trips and earning a larger share of their travel wallet.
