Personal relationship with travel providers is of primary importance. For example, once a hotel manager in another duty is convinced that you mean business and can send business, his or her providing an upgraded room or arranging a personal greeting for your client at the front desk will become standard procedure. Solving problems of your clients that may arise at his or her hotel comes easier with such a personal contact. Can you imagine how impressed your client will be when he or she learns that you and the hotel general manager are buddies?
2. Offer Social Transportation Service from Home and Bade
Perhaps you can make arrangements for transportation from the executive's home to the airport. How many travel agents perform that service? This article assumes you have the skills to make flight arrangements. But you can do even more for your clients. A call to the airline will provide you special information about the flight such as seat size, meals, etc. Make arrangements to get your client a special seat or a special meal. Pass that information on to your client before departure.
3. Help Make Your Client Comfortable at the Hotel
Make arrangements at the destination hotel for something special for your client a greeting at the front desk, a fruit basket or a bottle of wine in the room with a greeting from you. Send a directive to the hotel to inform the staff of the special needs or preferences of your client, such as a room on a lower floor, a fax machine in the room, or a stock of bottled water.
Learn as much as you can about your client's needs and preferences. Then, prepare a questionnaire for each client and keep it on file. Will he or she want the same room on subsequent visits? Do they want rooms with views? Do they prefer rooms on lower floors or near the elevators? Will they require fax machines, ironing boards, bottled water, or other special equipment in the room?
How to obtain new business, plus keep the business you already have
- Impress potential clients with your specialized knowledge. Once you have targeted your market in the method described above, the first thing to do is to impress potential clients with your specialized knowledge. For example, send them one of your sample questionnaires to show that you are interested in their special requirements and preferences, and are sensitive to the needs of the business traveler.
- Once you have determined the cities to which they travel, learn as much about those cities as you can and make it clear that you are familiar with those cities. Tell them also that, should they require a visit to a city which is unfamiliar to them, chances are the city is familiar to you.
- Suggest that they contact other clients who can serve as references and give testimonials to your special skills. A word from a third party is your best advertisement.
- Send monthly reminders of your services. Advertising experts will tell you that repetitive exposure eventually pays off. A monthly profile of a different city each month, updated airline news, or business trends in other cities not only displays your knowledge and interest, but keeps your name in front of them.
The most important thing to remember is that once you have acquired the client, you must be able to provide the service. Acquiring the client is the easy task. Keeping the client is more difficult
You might consider a special 800 number just for your business travel clients. This will enable them to call you anytime should a problem arise in their destination or should they need unexpected travel arrangements from that destination to another.
I am not telling you anything new when I stress that the secret of success in the travel business is service. Any travel agent, for example, can place their client on an American Airlines flight from Chicago to New York and put the client up in the New York Hilton Hotel. The ticket cost will probably be the same, and the airplane will be the same airplane and the Hilton will be the same Hilton. The extra you are providing is:
- Is the Hilton where they should be staying?
- Were their seats and meals properly selected for the flight?
- Was there a special amenity in the room when your client arrived? Did you negotiate an upgraded room for the same price?
- Can a fortuitous problem be handled by a phone call from you to the manager of the hotel?
- Did you select a special restaurant for your client about which he or she had no previous knowledge, and which pleased them immensely?
- Have you made your client feel at home, in a town with which he or she was previously unfamiliar?
- Was the room on the correct floor and was the bottled water waiting in the room, was the fax machine in place?
- Were the teleconferencing arrangements adequately made, did the board room have enough chairs, note pads and pencils?
