When Travel Advisors Sell to Their Peers

For the many travel advisors who are baby boomers embarking on a second career, focusing on their own peer group for business is a smart move. Recent consumer surveys indicate that not only are boomers the highest spending travel demographic, but the one most likely to seek help from a travel advisor.

That’s what Dan and Carol Porter, owners of The Roaming Boomers, have found. When their early retirement was derailed by a stock market crash, they went back to work by turning their popular travel blog into a highly successful travel agency.

Almost all of their business comes from people in their own age group or older. They say river cruises are especially popular with their clients, as they combine cultural experiences with ease of travel — two things that consumer research also says boomers value.

For more coverage of pertinent issues, click here.

Any suggestions for the coverage you would like to see are welcome. Feel free to contact me at mbl@skift.com.

— Maria Lenhart, Travel Advisor Editor

Featured Stories

Advisors Tap Into the Changing Consumer Behavior of Boomer Travelers: Despite all the marketing interest in reaching millennials, it may be the baby boomer generation that is the most likely business source for travel advisors. It’s a high-spending demographic that values interaction with those they can trust.

Is the Post-Trip Phone Call a Lost Art in a Digital World? Following up with clients after a trip is a critical part of the travel-planning process. However, getting clients to truly open up about their experiences takes finesse.

Is Southwest’s New Credit Card Companion Pass Offer Too Good to Be True? New customers who applied for the Southwest Airlines credit card by February 11, and meet minimum spending requirements, would earn one of the airline’s companion passes for the rest of the year. The deal sounds too good to be true. But Southwest knows what it’s doing. This is probably smart business.

Airline-Related

Spirit Airlines Gets Boost From Flexible Pricing on Carry-Ons to Bottled Water: Almost everything is improving at Spirit Airlines. Its on-time performance is getting better, and customer satisfaction is rising, according to the airline. More importantly for investors, ancillary revenue is up. Can the good times last?

Airbnb Hires Aviation Industry Veteran to Lead New Transportation Division:
In 2004, Fred Reid was appointed chief executive of Sir Richard Branson’s “next-generation airline,” Virgin America, but by late 2007, Reid was forced to leave the post in order for the airline to get off the ground, literally.

Tourism

Medellin’s Tourism Challenge: Telling the Right Story of Its Violent Past: Medellin has gone through an incredible transformation over the past 30 years, but large issues still remain prevalent. As the city figures out the right story it wants to tell, its “fake it ‘til you make it” strategy somehow works — speaking to the resilience of many developing economies that are navigating histories of crime, corruption, and violence, and still figuring out how to position themselves as destinations.

SeaWorld Recruits Carnival Exec as New CEO: By going outside the company to Carnival for its new CEO, SeaWorld is clearly looking to signal that it is serious about a new beginning. Gus Antorcha will have his work cut out for him up the turnpike in Orlando.

Dining Gets More Expensive for Business Travelers: Meals and hotel stays are becoming a bigger cost for business travelers. Airfares have dropped, although this doesn’t help companies that dispatch their workers in cars for meetings in nearby cities.

Hospitality

How to Make Improving the Guest Experience a Joyful Task: Meeting guest experience requirements is too often a series of boring checklists. But improving the end-to-end experience can be a joyful, creative project that involves everyone from the general manager to the most junior staff. Here’s a way to think about it.

Travel Media

The Long, Sad Collapse of USA Today Travel: The fall of USA Today Travel as a premier destination for consumer travel information has taken place slowly over the last decade, compounded by Gannett’s shift in focus to driving traffic across its network at the expense of unique, nuanced coverage.

Skift Travel Advisor Editor Maria Lenhart [mbl@skift.com] curates the Skift Travel Advisor Innovation Report. Skift emails the newsletter every Tuesday. Have a story idea? Or a juicy news tip? Want to share a memo? Send her an email.