Hey, it's your travel industry best friends, Robin and Jen from TIQUE. We're obsessed with practically anything that touches your business and allows you to scale to the level of success that you've always dreamed of. With Robin’s background in sales and marketing, and Jennifer's experience as a management level HR professional, we grew a small itinerary creation company into a multi-million dollar travel agency, and now we aim to help others skip the hard stuff and get right to the big wins. We're probably recording this with a glass of wine in hand, so pour one up with us, grab a seat, and join us to talk about all things travel and business.
Welcome to the second episode of Tique Talks. Today, we are covering one of our absolute favorite topics, which is how to increase your average ticket sale. We'll be honest, this did not happen overnight for us, but with some consistent marketing and tailoring our message. We were able to gradually attract a new clientele with a more generous budget and elevated style while simultaneously graduating our existing clients into that same category. Do let’s dig in and talk through exactly how we did it.
Jennifer: All right. So I think it's important to take it back to how we actually started. Which was that we were an itinerary creation company. So if you listen to the first episode, you know that we were actually doing itinerary creation, which was dining, spa, tour recommendations - but none of it was commissionable. We didn't have an IATA, a consortia, we weren't registered with the state. So none of this was actually able to scale. As soon as we realize this, well, I'd love to say as soon as we realize this, but it really wasn't. It was probably too slow of a burn. We let it go on a little bit too long. We did realize that the model was not going to be sustainable for us to individually produce, and make the income that we wanted, while also being able to step away. And this is just kind of like the truth and grind of a business. Once you are completely reliant on your own productivity, you can't ever scale to a point of real wealth. I don't know if that's offensive to anyone, but the reality is anything that's productivity based is always going to be capped at your ability to produce. And so the more you think about that, the more you realize that you have to put other things in place that allow you to scale and make the income that you want.
So, with that being said. Robin, I'll definitely let you elaborate on that because you are part of that model and you also were an integral part of the transition where we went to commission. That's when you started selling, was when we actually transitioned to a model that would allow you to make money.
Robin: Yeah, I came out of the back end stuff and went to the forefront, which was nice. But like you said, I think not a lot of people realize that service based businesses are so awesome, like we got in the business of service. However, if you know you can't charge what you want, you can't make what you want, you really are limited because there's only one of you. Unless you have a team, but that's adding overhead. So, yes, that's a huge cyclical thing where it's like if you want to grow, if you want more money, it feels like you need to expand and that's not in everyone's wheelhouse. That's not what everyone decides their great vision for their business is. But in order to make that income, you have to get to a place where you're able to charge more and make more money off of the same level of productivity. So, that's in adding commissions, and all of that kind of stuff. It really helped us go from servicing as many people as possible all the time. Also, dining reservations are ridiculous. Such a pain in the butt. If you do them for your clients now as a booking agent, good on you. I totally understand their value is like a concierge like extra service charge. However, I do believe you should be charging extra for them because they are kind of a nightmare to manage.
Jennifer: That could be a whole episode on itself. Every time we talk, I'm like this could be a whole episode on itself, but managing concierge bookings and how to do so seamlessly without being on the hook for all of them, is something that's like a whole different conversation. Because a lot of people are doing these manually and it's so much liability. The more liability you have, to me, the more income you should be making off of that liability. With great responsibility should come great income.
Robin: Amen.
Jennifer: Can we make a shirt for that?
Robin: Forever and ever. Amen.
Jennifer: But we also, we're servicing originally Airbnb clients and people that were doing their own airfare. So we didn't have the liability of the accommodations and the airfare, but we were attracting a lower budget client because they were doing those things and usually finding, you know, the lowest deals possible or booking on Expedia. Then we were having to deal with the rework when any of that would fall through, which was like a whole different beast in itself.
So, when we did start booking, you and I do head first into sharing deals. Which is like, I feel like the word deal is a four letter word now in the travel industry, the D word, the D word. Um, and we would post on social media all of these packages that we were self creating, whether it be in vacs or classic or EuropeExpress, and it was working.
Robin: Yeah, it really did. We were able to get a lot of clients because you know, it showed number one, what we were doing. It takes, I wanna say five to seven touchpoints for somebody to actually realize what you do. So if you think you're talking about booking travel too much on social media, you're probably not, because people need to hear it a million times.
So, once we started sharing those deals and actually gaining some “oh wait, you book that” “can you book me that at this price” people. People start coming to us for more trips. However, while we were getting clients, they were very transactional. It was single booking relationships. They saw a quick deal to Paris with a sweet hotel in the middle of the city and that's all they wanted and they never really came back because, you know, maybe the next deal didn't suit them. So, it was very transactional. So course people would quickly book on their own because if you kind of pull the details together and give it to him on a silver platter and they price compare and the prices even $50 cheaper homies, they're going with the cheaper price because that's just the way it is.
So we did not match their expectations and it did. It took a little bit of us being like, huh, maybe this isn't quite where we want to go with the business. We never wanted to be a transactional service. We always wanted to position ourselves as “a luxury travel advisor” as everyone in this industry does. But truly no matter what, whether you are booking a 5 star jet vacation to Europe or in a private yacht or something ridiculous, or you are booking a moderate all inclusive in Mexico, you are a luxury service provider because the whole premise of a travel advisor is similar to, you know, a tax consultant or a lawyer. Like you're providing a service which I can do my taxes myself, would I ever want to? No. I would be in jail. So their service is invaluable, but they position themselves as luxury. They're worth their service charge because ultimately doing it on my own is number one, a headache. I don't understand the legality of taxes anyways. but there's like a whole mask. So, you don't have to sell luxury properties to be a luxury service. I just want to reiterate that because a lot of people are like, no, I get scared of luxury because, like, my clients aren't luxury. I don't want to work with luxury clients. I want to work with, you know, budget conscious families trying to plan their all inclusive, you know, dream vacation. But like working within their budget, they don't have thousands and thousands to just blow.
Jennifer: I love that you went there because this is my trigger. Like, you know this about me. When I first got started, I did not grow up in a town where people traveled. I did not grow up in a family that ever went to Europe. That was not a norm for us. So to me, I absolutely geek out on making travel accessible for people. So, I do love finding this nine night four-star with first class trains and airfare deal to Spain, on Europe express for $4500. Which you used to be able to do in 2019. It's not the way of the world anymore. We know this. But, during that time, I would post one itinerary and make it really beautiful on social media and I'd sell three of them. So I was like, great, I'm doing the work of 1 and I'm bringing in 3 commissions.
But we weren't charging fees. Again, to your point, it was very transactional. Because, technically, someone could probably snag that same copy/paste and do it themselves. Especially if someone doesn't believe they're not bought into the idea of a travel advisor. There are a lot of people that don't see the value.
We were also advertising that we don't charge fees and we were sharing deals. And if you're doing that, I'm not saying you're doing it incorrectly because I will credit all of that to how we actually created a client base that gave us fantastic referrals. So, I'm not going to take anything away from what we did, but, in a time like now - there are not that many deals to find and you're immediately going to cut yourself at the knees on how much you can actually make, because you are going to be churning, churning, churning. Just like we were for the itinerary creation company. That that's the whole point of this episode is, quantity doesn't equal income, but quality can. Quantity definitely doesn't equal sanity.
Robin: That's not. You face an uphill battle now because you've positioned your clients. You've positioned yourself as the deal queen, like the travel deal. That's where I go for travel deals. So graduating those clients from quick hit deals that are really, really awesome but not going to make you the commission or give you the business life that you envision. Now you're transitioning them over and it's hard to get people to be like, “you didn't charge fees before,e what about this past Paris trip that I booked for $3000? Where is that? Why is it 7K now? Like, I don't understand.” It's hard to move those people over.
So, something I wish in retrospect, to go back five years ago now to young Robin and Jen, eager to make their mark on the travel world. I would say like, do not just, like put some time and effort into thinking about the business you want to eventually run in five years. Because to position yourself in the beginning is hard. Yes, you're gonna you're probably going to cut through the weeds. But I think you can talk to any travel advisor, like cutting through the crappy, transactional, rude clients in the beginning is going to give you so much peace down the road because like your people are out there. And I firmly believe in that. I don't care how big this industry gets. I don't care how big, you know how many agents that come into our stratosphere in the coming years, because there's always going to be people who would rather book with you for whatever reason that is, whether it's your expertise in South America or your personality over the phone. Like people don't buy services, people don't buy products. People buy people, and people want to buy from people they like.
So truly, take some time. If you haven't, sit down and identify your ideal client avatar and map out who they are. Take your “sales pitch” if you will, or whatever marketing strategy you have and really look at tailoring it to those people from the junk, because that is where I believe you're going to truly start unearthing the people who find you. Whether that's, you know, investing in a visual identity that aligns with those iIdeal clients or talking directly to them. Are they like the professionals of the world who are running their C suites, their high end level or whatever companies, and they don't have time? They just talk a certain way. So are you marrying the way that they talk and what they're saying when they want to book a trip and all of that? There's a lot of things to consider. And again, that might be a whole nother episode of marketing messaging that hits cuz marketing messaging needs to hit and you gotta pull on the heartstrings. You gotta, you gotta tug at those things. You gotta agitate their problems and provide them the solution where they're like, oh, oh my gosh, I've been waiting for this so many times. So, yeah, that was a rant.
Jennifer: I love a rant.
One thing that we didn't even mention, but I think we should actually take a minute to mention, is that when we were sharing these deals when we were marketing ourselves as no fees. We also had absolutely no process. Like, like we didn't even know what the process should look like. We were like sell and go. Sell and go. That could have probably been our motto at that time, is like there was no inbetween. Which is also what made it transactional. So why would someone buy a deal from us, and then come back to us, but use us when we don't, when they don't have a deal, If we're not creating loyalty along the way, we didn't do anything to create loyalty. So I can't blame them for saying, OK, well, you don't have a deal this time. I'm gonna go to Expedia because we were essentially at that point just as transactional as booking online and frankly probably getting in the way because we handle payments manually and there's this slight delay in working with a human rather than this transaction online. So I don't blame anyone that used us during that model. But I do want to, like, send out a mass email, like if you tried us in 2017 and 16 and even 18, please give us another chance. That's what I would ask for.
Robin: We're different now. We swear we weren't. We were just Expedia Robin and Expedia Jen and you're right, we provided no extra value that would come from a true service provider. Like our process was give us your credit card, blank, we'll talk to you again when we need the second payment, and then we'll send you some docs. I'd never checked in the clients on their trips. I don't know if I followed up afterwards, unless they were actual close personal friends or family or something like that. But yeah, all of the touch points that we have now that really make people feel like, dang, this is a VIP experience, was not the case back then.
Jennifer: What we're saying is we failed a lot to learn a lot. Oh, yeah. But we also shifted our verbiage. So all that to say after we shared the deals and we saw this pattern that was continuing, and we weren't able to bring people back into our scope. We started shifting our verbiage to being more value based, and that's my favorite word to use, is value. Because value is a subjective term, whereas deal, I mean I guess deal can be slightly subjective depending on your income level. But value based is so personal. Whereas the deal is you immediately think of like certain number signs. But when you say value based, it's all defined by how someone prioritizes their time, how someone prioritizes their spend and their experience. So once you actually start using language that's in sync with the values of the audience that you want to attract. That's when all the magic starts to fall into place and you actually start to attract the clients that you want, your dream clients, which are I would hope at the higher price point because that's the whole topic of this episode is how we increased our average ticket sales. And what we did was, we shifted our audience, we transitioned away from deals, started talking about value based and stylistic preferences, but we also added boundaries. And this is our favorite.
Robin: Boundaries have saved us. Again, I don't know if we want to make this a whole other post, but I feel like when I first started I didn't really know what education based marketing or values based marketing was. Like I didn't know how to talk about it. So just a quick example of what that could look like for your business. My whole social media changed the day that I started busting myths about travel advisors. It was like one of my big, I would post about on my social media where I thought about myself. like I did not use the travel advisor before I came. A travel advisor. I again thought, you know, headset AAA strip mall situation going on and that's not the case. So like to sit there and call it what it is. I sat down and like you're if you're a type A personality and you geek out on planning and you love looking up restaurants, why would I ever work with a travel advisor? Great, I had an answer because I am also type A. But what type As don't love about travel planning Is the flight delays. Something got cancelled. Their transfer isn't a lot, like here. Nobody wants to deal with all these stupid little details on their trip.
So my whole approach to that value was saying that, like, it's OK to be a type a planner and work with a travel advisor. But here's like all this stuff that I do on the back end that like, you know, I want you to have a say in your hotel. I want you to have a say in where you go to dinner. Like if that's your style, great. I'm happy to provide you options. I'm happy that you know, point you in the right direction and let your you know I'm not going to take away your joy, and be like no you can't choose that restaurant. But that was my whole premise, was lik,e are you also going to deal with your flight getting canceled or your tour of the Louvre just got totally, you know, derailed. You can't make it. Your Uber or your transfer didn't show up. Those things are things that I can help with with my in-destination partner. So it was breaking through where people are like, oh, I get that.
So I think if you ever want to get started on values, and again, I don't know if we want to do a whole episode on this. But if you ever want to get started on like I don't really know what that means, sit back and like bust some myths. That's the quickest way to do it. And you have myths. Everyone hears the myths of travel advisors. Like call them what they are. Tell people what it is and give them an inside glimpse into who you are and the service you provide and that will take you from that transactional Expedia on the other side of the computer to an actual service provider named Jen, who loves Italy. You know.
Jennifer: So, like you said, I think the first step that we did was definitely do the myth busting. But, one thing that I would recommend for anyone that is starting out is.You can get so frustrated because no matter how many times we talked about who we were, what we did, how we're different. You're still not hitting part of your audience. People have a very short memory, and what we have to realize is that people are actually mostly concerned with themselves, and that's the reality, just like we all are. But they're mostly concerned with themselves and they're not going to remember everything that you're sharing on social media all the time. So we had to share over and over and over and educate and educate and educate. And the moral of this story is, if you feel like you've said it until you're blue in the face that what you do, who you are, what your company is, keep saying it - because ultimately someone doesn't know and people have a short attention span. So, just keep on marketing yourself.
But the one other thing that was really important and pivotal at this transition from sales pitch to education based marketing, was that once we established what a travel advisor did through that myth busting, we were able to establish ourselves as professionals. And that's when we really got into setting boundaries, which was not taking an inquiry through Facebook, not taking an inquiry through text, not jumping at a yes just to get someone on the books, and being so hungry for business that we were like, “oh my gosh, someone wants to go to Key West, I'll pull three quotes and send them in two hours”. Because there's no mutual buy-in in that, no one is committed to our process, and so by adding an inquiry form we created a hoop for people to jump through to show that they were actually interested in working with us. Not that they were just looking for a deal or fishing, but they were actually interested in working with us, and it allowed us to collect a lot of information up front. That gave us the opportunity to say if the trip was a good fit for us or not. And once you can start discerning whether the trip is a good fit for you or not, you have the power as the professional and you've shifted that power of like quote, quote, quote, quote, quote to professional service.
Robin: 100 freaking percent, I think that the travel industry does require some emergency situations. Like we do not operate under this false pretense that you can totally get away from, you know, dealing with things on the weekends or having a late night phone call. Like, we're not here to tell you that that is not going to happen at some point in your industry life. However, you deserve boundaries as a business owner. Like there are ways to get out of like this, never ending grind and create a business that helps makes you feel good, that doesn't just always raise your heart rate when you see an e-mail notification come through. And I think that's a huge take away, is knowing your boundaries and training your clients to follow those boundaries. It'll just make such a difference in your world from here on out. And those were things we just didn't have in the because again it was churn and burn. I need more income and we've gradually changed from like, I actually don't need income, I'd rather wait for the small fish to pass so I can go after the big fish who's going to be willing to, you know, pay my service fee and get a little bit more of that intention behind getting a trip right instead of booking a trip immediately and getting the best deal possible. So, really pivoting.
Because people who see you as an advisor will respect your boundaries. You don't expect your lawyer or your tax accountant to email you back at 5:00 PM on a Sunday during dinner, and if you do, that's very unfortunate. It's rude, but like that's where you shift from agent, because Expedia would probably get right back to you, because that's what they do. But you, you are not Expedia. You don't deserve to be Expedia. You deserve to have boundaries and a business that does not make you want to rip your hair out all the time. So that is my peace to you. You deserve it.
Jennifer: You should give yourself permission to set boundaries, to define a niche, and permission to make more. Like that is, like if I could just like tattoo something on myself, it would be like give yourself permission to set boundaries and make more. That's like the moral of the story of every podcast we will probably ever do.
But, one additional thing and there are multiple things I keep on saying, but there's one more thing. One other thing that we did was that we personally started to invest in our experience at properties. And that's where the secret sauce is. No one can start a business without spending money. I am not saying, read in red. I am absolutely not saying that you should take every FAM trip, that you should go on every trip and learn as much as possible. But for those places that you know you want to specialize in, and the properties that you know you want to sell, you are going to have to do some investment on your end. Whether that's investment of time and speaking with a supplier and then educating your audience afterward, or it's actually an investment to travel there and showcase it live.
Because again, people join people. And if someone sees me having a fantastic time at Grand Hotel Tremezzo, having an aperol spritz, on their floating pool. You best believe they're gonna want to picture themselves there, too. And if that hotel isn't in line with what you've been trying to sell, that's gonna feel very out of place for your audience. So, you should be visiting the places, not on vacation, i’m not talking about vacation. I'm talking about investing in your business as a fan, you should be going and visiting those places that truly match the audience that you want to attract.
Robin: 1000%.
Jennifer: So, Robin and I did a little bit of a self-guided fam one time. We spent five days road tripping through Italy and visiting every villa property that exists in Tuscany, it feels like, not literally, but it surely felt like it. I'm not gonna say we didn't have a great time…
Robin: If you’re curious we did.
Jennifer: We poured as much money into the trip as we poured wine during that trip, if that gives you any idea. But I would say it was worth every penny, because it's what we ended up selling, and everyone knew that we loved selling Italy. So we started getting tons of referrals for Italy because people are seeing us showcase all of these properties, in a fun way that they actually wanted to appreciate the properties. We weren't like going room to room and showcasing the junior suite, here's this room category XYZ. We were showing that we were road tripping, we were having fun, we were having wine, we were having all the pasta and of course we were showing the beautiful rooms and the hotels. But it was as our audience would experience it and that's really different and there has to be a return on investment and this is absolutely our next episode. But there has to be a return on investment in a FAM. But before the return comes the investment. And that's where we saw a big difference in the types of trips we were selling, were the types of trips that we were willing to invest in personally.
Robin: 1000% and I think it's really important and we can touch on this in the next FAM episode, is that you have a way of calculating an ROI of a trip so that you can make informed financial decisions. I fell into the trap, when I first got started, that everything was a tax write off. I didn't even really know what a tax write off was. Man, I guess I thought it was just like free money from the government, I think, until my husband was like what are you doing? Like so dumb. So, actually taking into account and planning and I'd probably just made myself sound like a dumb blonde there, but I we jumped at everything because it sounded, you know, right off-y. But just because a Costa Rica trip was a good tax write off for me did not mean that I ever sold Costa Rica, wanted to sell Costa Rica, like Central America, South America never my cup of tea… and I didn't want it to be. It just never really intrigued me the way it does. Just like Europe might not intrigue everybody who listened to this podcast the way it did for us.
When we did define our niche and we did identify exactly what ideal clients we want to serve in the trips we want to book for people. It became very clear that just because it was offered, you know, this five night Mexico FAM did not mean that I had to take it because ultimately it it pulled me away from my ideal client and put me into a stratosphere of clients that weren't fit for me and not something, not a relationship that I really want to keep maintaining. So, It is important to not only think about, yes, this will cost them up on the front end, but what will it look like in return if you book 2412 clients off of this trip with an average rate at like $800 per commission plus your $500.00 service fee attached. So, like there is ways to calculate and make sure that you are making informed business decisions because that ultimately is so important as a business owner, that we are making decisions that move our bottom line, not just decisions that it's like, yeah, I want to go on a trip right now.
Jennifer: I mean, you know this about me, the decisions that I made were moved by my heart in the beginning, not by my bottom line. And so I can say this in full vulnerability and transparency that I said yes too many times. But ultimately, we did recenter and and we're sharing all of our failures because we think it's important for other people to not have the same ones. And we want you to be able to learn from those mistakes. And Robin, you didn't sound dumb about taxes. It's just not your jam. I handled the taxes and the payroll and I think a lot of people listening to this can completely relate that they're in the same. They're in the same space and people don't know what to write off or what should be written off. So that is, I'm writing that down on my notepad next to me as an episode in itself.
Robin: So from all of this, I hope you take away that we really don’y deepen how to increase your ticket sales, but, also we found 12 new episodes so I hope you're excited for what’s to come. Because if you know me and Jen, we have lots of thoughts, and we love to share them with everyone
Jennifer: So, obviously, not everyone can just afford to buy a ticket and go to Europe, especially in the beginning of your business. And not all of those hotels were comp nights. We paid for a rental car. We paid for our meals. So, if you're in a place of your business where you genuinely don't have the ability to spend or invest, I would rather say invest, in going somewhere. The best thing to do is invest your time, and that is with setting up trainings or educational sessions, partnership meetings, supplier meetings, with DMC's and hotels that allow you to learn face to face with them. That is free. I mean your time has a price on it. I'm not saying that, but it is not the same as jumping on a plane, and you can kind of create your own flightless FAM, if you will.
So invest the time. Do the research of what you actually want to sell, what aligns with your clientele, and then set up all of these meetings and educational sessions, or find trainings that already exist that people have done. I mean there are so many supplier trainings that exist out there that people just aren't utilizing that you can pop on.
Robin: What about Jenn, but what about supplier trainings that talk about like logistics and stuff? Is that a thing? Because every supplier meeting I've been on is all about like properties and hotels. What about like actually learning about a destination.
Jennifer: I mean, you know that the destination…
Robin: It's a plug, join Niche. We have a whole library of destination masterclasses and this is the stuff that Jen was just talking about. Like it's not just, yes, properties are involved towards recommendations for dining and all of that. We cover it all for the destinations. But it's also about the logistics. Like there are times where like in Greece, you cannot get to certain islands because of weather prohibiting and stuff. And I used to book it just because I had no freaking idea, until thankfully a supplier was like, yo girl, this is not going to go down well and you're gonna look like a clown. So thank you to her. I mean we didn't know these things. So, if you need, you know, if you're like, well, I want to get started with Italy or Greece or what else is there. Right now we have Africa, Maldives… they're in there, they're waiting for you to consume. Join Niche, in our premium channel, and it could be yours. Along with all the other amazing resources and advisors. So I guess we'll end this episode on not shameless little plug.
Jennifer: I agree with that. So there are two final things that we did that really up leveled our experience, that allowed our clientele to be at a different price point. Not allowed them, but essentially kind of gave the push of self selecting out of our process if they were not within our price point. One of those things was adding fees and that we will save for a whole nother day because as we know, fees is a controversial topic, and should be a four letter word. I guess fees within an S is a four letter word.., the other F word.
But we ultimately added fees, which creates another boundary. It creates a mutual buy in and respect of time. But also what it says is I'm willing to invest in this experience and the people that are willing to invest in an experience are usually at a higher price point, because they're willing to invest in their overall experience, not just their planning experience.
So adding fees, if you were at the season of your business, and I do think that there could be a transition, someone could implement them right away. But if you're not at the place where you're comfortable with that, start thinking about how you would want to implement that. And work towards it because that is really going to set a hard line where people can say yes or no based off of their spend, but it also guarantees your income. After 2020 there were no guarantees of our income because we were doing those, we still had on the books, a lot of those transactional bookings and voucher bookings and things that got cancelled and ultimately it pushed Robin right out the door because she was over it.
Robin: And here I am on the other side making sure that you don't make the Robin mistake.
Jennifer: So we want you to not get burnt out. We want you to protect your finances. We want you to constantly show up on social and in your workflow, exemplifying the quality level that you want your clients to experience and everything echoing the spend that you want them to invest in your business.
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