Advisors Sound Off on Trip-Stacking, Shorter Booking Windows, & Longer Vacations
byDaniel McCarthy/
Travel advisors have seen their job descriptions change since the pandemic started in early 2020. Part of that added responsibility is now being able to pivot at a moment’s notice as COVID, and the variants that come with it, continue to wreak havoc with even the best of plans.
在本周在拉斯维加斯举行的Virtuoso Travel Week(VTW)期间,一些顾问分享了他们有关如何应对越来越不可预测的世界的建议自2020年以来,人们感到有些假期他们想要的假期。
For some of the advisors, trip-stacking allows them to almost guarantee that their clients are going to travel to one of two destinations during their target vacation dates, though with the Delta variant now impacting travel, even that could change.
What it does is it gives them a greater opportunity to go to one of two places that are on their bucket list. It also gives advisors the chance to make two bookings, though there might be a little extra work in re-scheduling the second trip.
“It’s how we hedge our bets,” said Joshua Bush, the owner of the Philadelphia-based agency Avenue Two Travel. For Bush, the move is part of the agency’s larger strategy to pivot during the pandemic and one that lends itself to the increasingly flexible cancellation policies that have come out of the pandemic.
他说:“我们将一次预订多次旅行,因为那里有灵活的取消政策。”“这确保他们能够做某事并帮助我们建立管道。”
它的工作原理是,顾问将为他们的客户预订两次旅行,例如,同一时期的Silversea Cruise和夏威夷土地度假。巡航可能有30天的取消政策,而土地假期可能有7天的政策。如果由于共同或其他某些事件而导致一次旅行的可能性减少,则顾问可以取消一次并推动另一个事件。
It comes down to “changing the dates and making sure they have something going forward,” Bush said, and lets them get “things that we know that we can actually finish.”
Gary Johnson, the owner of Seattle’s Woodside Travel, said that his agency has been doing the same thing for some time now.
“I’ve been doing the double bookings for about a year, especially with Fiji,” he said.
对于约翰逊,智慧与客户沟通是关键h or without the trip-stacking method.
“有了三角洲的变体,我们一直与客户保持联系。我认为这只是与他们联系并解释他们对目的地的了解。
It’s not about making the decision for the client, it is about keeping track of the information and providing them with the most up-to-date information they need to make their own decisions. It’s extra work for advisors but it also shows the client just how valuable working with a travel advisor is.
“People call us wanting to go to Canada and they want to know then the border open, they want to go Hawaii and want to navigate the testing requirements. We’re finding a lot of new clients coming that way and looking for help because they’ve given up doing it themselves,” Johnson said.
SmartFlyer顾问Erina Pindar说:“我完全,完全同意,现在使用旅行顾问可能比以往更重要。”“如今的生活和旅行最可预测的一件事是它的不可预测性。”
While that unpredictability has altered the ways advisors work, including the trip-stacking method, it’s also changed how clients behaved. All advisors speaking at VTW said that booking windows are more compressed than ever simply because a trip booked in a shorter window will have less unpredictability than one in a medium-term or longer-term window.
“We’re booking trips to destinations that are currently open,” Pindar added. “We only know what we know and we can only advise on the information that’s available to us now.”
Pindar说,她不一定同时为客户预定多次旅行,但她将确保为有库维德(Covid)更改但仍然热衷旅行的计划的客户提供备份计划。
She’s also seeing clients take longer trips, “they are larger than ever and longer than ever,” she said of her bookings.
她说:“如今,我们看到了一个月或一个月半的欧洲预订。”她补充说,新的混合工作环境只要有wifi,她的客户就可以在任何地方工作。
Bush said that this agency is seeing that "nice big increase" in average stay across the board--in 2019 the agency had clients stay at hotels for an average of 2.9 nights while now, in 2021, that number has increased to 4.3 nights, including a lot of clients who are looking for those month-long stays.