Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 201: Luxury travel isn't the Resort, it's how your travel clients feel working with you
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome back to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. We're on day 201. Luxury. Let's talk about it. It isn't the resort. It isn't some self-proclaimed, I'm a five-star luxury experience. Because honestly, how many resorts or maybe cruise lines just put the word luxury in and are like, we're luxury when it's like Borderline garbage tier. I I'm not gonna name names. I can think of some brands off the top of my head though that are like luxury five-star experience. It's like I know for a fact that's not true. And you might be doing that as a TA, but maybe you really want to get into the luxury space. And it's totally different from the common perception that TAs are taught, like, just book this brand, then you're luxury. No, that's not what it is. a lot of people think Self-proclaimed five-star luxury resorts and top deck cruise suites is what a luxury travel advisor does. The word luxury is about the property, the price tag, and the star rating. It's not. So today we're gonna completely reframe how you think about this word, okay? Like a budget guest house, like go on Airbnb and it'll be luxury cottage and then like you look into it and it's like a trailer. Also, I did have a budget like Airbnb type place for one of my like it was like a 25th anniversary trip years ago. And it looked like it's possibly questionable slash quaint. And the clients were like, we really like this property. Can you book this for us? And I was like, if this is what you want, this is what we'll do. But that little tiny budget guest house, I think it was in Cocker Key in Belize. With the owners just like they're on site. They remember the guests by name. The owners are taking care of everything. They added little special touches to the room without even being asked. They checked in, but without being intrusive, because I've had like, this is such a luxury resort with butler service, and the butler's like knocking on my door every 20 minutes. That is not luxury service. That is someone who's trying to get a bigger tip and hopefully get a five star rating, and it just tanked my review of butler services and all inclusive resorts. I've had one really good butler in an AI, but most of them I feel like are way overbearing and don't know how to anticipate. Anticipate needs. Okay. That's my opinion. I don't give two rips about butlers. Conversely, I've had butlers completely ignore me, and then on the last full day, they're like, By the way, I'm here. Can I get a tip? No. I mean, not the normal tip, you know? Okay. But those little owners in this little Airbnb thing, that made those clients feel like it was a much more luxurious experience than like conversely my experience where the butlers like bothering me while I'm taking a nap. And I'm like, dude, I'm napping. If I want something, I'd ask you. You know? The star rating is self-proclaimed marketing. I think we talked about star rating in past episodes, but a real quick reference, a five-star rating. I can look it up to verify, but I'm pretty sure it just means there are restaurants on site and there is a butler service and 24-7 room service. But let me see. Five star rating meaning. Nope. I'm gonna let me further that. I wish I had a producer so I could be like Theo Vaughn and be like, Can you look that up for me? Yeah, twenty-four hour reception, concierge services, valet parking, daily turn down. Like that's a general guideline for a five-star property. on-site dining, a gym, a Indoor and or outdoor pools and a spa. That's five star. Doesn't matter if it's good service or not. And then like toiletries and stuff. And butler service. Okay. Alright, let me go back to where I was so I don't lose my notes. Any hoodle. So anyone that has those bare minimum services, even if it's not good service, can say, we're a five-star property. We're five-star cruise line. We're five stars. And that doesn't mean that it's good, okay? And just because you sell something that says they're five stars doesn't mean that it's gonna be a good experience. Anyway, this matters enormously for you as a travel advisor because it means luxury service doesn't have to be locked into specific niches or budgets. You can specialize in like mid-range or like the budget conscious traveler and still deliver a genuinely luxurious experience. Not through the properties you book per se, but through how your client feels at every single point of working with you. You can create that luxury experience. And there is real research, which I like to include in a lot of episodes, behind this reframe, and it's worth understanding. Also, if you're watching this on YouTube, I've been like implementing like I on screen notes for this and I feel like I'm not making enough eye contact. So but I also wasn't really doing it so much maybe with my notebook. This is just a little digression here. But I was trying to like, if I put it on the screen I'll have more eye contact and I've seen a couple of my videos and I'm like constantly glancing down and I'm like never mind. Okay. And I'm gonna be doing that in the next few episodes until I make up my mind and how I want to have my notes for these episodes. So feel free to comment. Like, yeah, it doesn't even look like you're making eye contact with me. But maybe you just put this on and listen. I don't c it doesn't matter. Anyway. Alright, so there is real research and it's worth understanding because it will change how you do your own service. the old idea of luxury is it's expensive, it's flashy, or it's scarce. That is not the perception per research anymore. And some people will still mark it in that manner, but it's more relational and expertial. Like value that gets created together through the interaction between the person providing the service and the person receiving it. Not value that's simply handed over in a transaction. and there's like I don't want to like offend anyone, but there are certain brands that pose as fake luxury in like the retail space. They are not luxury. And anyone that has those brands around and they're like Flashy wearing them, whatever. it screams new money, and I don't know what I'm talking about. Okay. And it's the same thing with this perception because they try to use that scarcity and stuff, and people are waking up to it. Okay. Anyways, in simple terms. Luxury in a service business isn't something that you just deliver to a client. It's something that happens between you and the client, built through the relationship itself. And like I was mentioning, the retail, there are specific brands that promote themselves as luxury and they use that whole scarcity tactic to be able to rip you off. Because it ties to your emotions and the identity-based side. Like there's a whole that identity-based side of luxury. And it's the idea that people are drawn to experiences that make them feel seen, understood, and personally catered to more than they're drawn to the object or the amenity itself. So there is some confusion. With that with luxury. There are brands that act like they're doing that, and it is not true luxury. And I'm like relating this to retail space and how you can implement it in your service. but to truly be luxury, your clients need to be f need to feel seen, understood, and personally catered to more than. The trip itself, right? So personalization in particular shows up again and again in research as one of the strongest drivers of how quote unquote luxurious an experience feels. And I got another idea in my brain as an example, because it speaks directly to a person's sense of being uniquely understood rather than being processed as like one more booking in a system or sale at the register. Tailored clothing. You can buy your clothes from Old Navy. Hopefully you aren't getting old Navy clothes tailored, but you can because I don't know the quality of it. I don't know why I referenced Old Navy. I feel like it's like budget-friendly stuff. It can be well made. and if you were to take like those jeans or those tops to a tailor. And they get them perfectly tailored to your measurements and your body type so that every time you put that t-shirt on or pull those jeans up, or maybe you go buy a suit or like your wedding gown if you're a woman getting married, like that is a luxury experience because the clothing is being personalized to your exact body shape. Okay. So how can you Mmm, maybe tie that into your travel business because that's the entire advantage of a human advisor BT dubs versus a booking engine or chat GPT AI travel planning. They can't replicate that. They can't personally tailor a trip f like like the way that we as human advisors can. And that's so weird that I'm like humans. A website can show them a five star resort, but it can't remember that their anniversary trip needs to be quiet on the annual actu annual actual anniversary date because last year was hard for their family. But you can What? Okay. A lot of you listening to this episode, if you have been a travel advisor for a while, you're gonna be like, well shit, I'm a super luxury advisor. Great. That's what we're going for. Like, I want you to understand how awesome you actually are. Okay, so let's picture two rando people booking the exact same resort, same room category, same dates. Person A gets the confirmation email with attachments and a let me know if you have questions. also never say let me know. Don't put the work on them. That takes away from the luxury experience. Person B gets a short note before departure with a specific restaurant recommendation for like their anniversary, a heads up about what to expect, a check-in. And a call or text anytime while you're there, day or night, I will respond as quickly as I can. Same resort, same star rating, probably paid the same amount, maybe a little bit more for person number, person number B, it's fine. But completely different experience because the feeling of being taken care of. anticipated like needs anticipated and personally attended to is the actual product the resort is just the setting it happens to be in okay so like Yeah. And that's this is why resorts have those butler services. those butlers are trained and they're usually like higher end, have been in the industry for a long time. But that doesn't mean they have the innate ability of making their clients feel taken care of, anticipate their needs, or personally attend to them in the way that they need to. It's really difficult when a butler has like ten or twelve rooms assigned to them at a time to truly give that luxury experience. And that's why you can differentiate yourself from booking engines and chat GPT, AI travel planning. Because you can do that and you can communicate that with the concierge team at the resort. You can do all of that. Alright. What does this mean for your business? like I said, you should be like, I'm already doing this. Congratulations. It means you don't need to pivot into ultra-high-end bookings to build a reputation for luxury level service. And there are so many agents out there that get so many referrals because they provide the service naturally and they don't have the confidence that they can do it. And it's like in like a different niche if they want to expand. Like if you want to make more money per booking, so be it. If you want to stay where you are, keep doing what you're doing. you're specializing in like Disney or like budget conscious family five-star honeymoons the same principle applies and you're probably already doing this as a travel advisor luxury is the byproduct of your attentiveness your personalization and the client like genuinely feeling known throughout the process not a price point that you have to chase Okay, tomorrow's episode, we're gonna go further into this and we're gonna get tactical about it. And we're gonna talk about specific touch points that you can build into your client process just starting this week if you want to. Plus, how to actually train yourself to anticipate what a client needs before they ever have to ask. This is day 201 of Travel Agency The Year. If this is the first time you found this episode, my name is Rachel K. Did not introduce myself in the beginning. That is fine. Please hit that subscribe button for daily notifications as episodes are uploaded daily this first year. 365 episodes. Have a wonderful day. I will see you tomorrow.