Posted 20 November 2017
Familiarisation trips or ‘Fam trips’, and Educationals are one of the many great perks of working in the travel industry, offering a unique opportunity to experience a destination, hotel, or product first hand, making you better informed and able to make personal recommendations to your customers.
At Travel Counsellors, there are plenty of opportunities to earn places on these fantastic trips, from supplier incentives to our own ‘TC Rewards Scheme’, allowing you to earn points that you can exchange for places on trips. And, thanks to our close relationships with our valued suppliers, many of our trips are exclusive to our Travel Counsellor.
One of our newer Travel Counsellors, Collette Howse joined us having worked in a high-street agency for 18 years. She says “In my 18 years on the high street, I never went on a single trip. Now that I’ve joined Travel Counsellors, I’ve been on three in 10 months I’ve been here!”
Collette joined us on our most recent ‘fam’ trips with Cruise and Maritime Voyages (CMV). With the undivided attention of three representatives from CMV, we were kept entertained and accompanied over the entirety of cruise. So, for Travel Counsellors this posed a fantastic opportunity to speak directly to the National Sales Manager, Business Development Manager and Trade Sales Support Manager on a one-to-one basis. And, with just 19 Travel Counsellors in attendance, the trip was much more intimate than alternative fam trips where there may be up to 100 agents taking part.
For Travel Counsellors, the first-hand knowledge gained on a educationals is invaluable. A number of Travel Counsellors on the trip had never cruised before, but with cruise being a huge market with great potential for new sales, having the personal experience to pass on to customers can be the difference between winning and losing a booking.
Travel Counsellor, Sam Friday, attended the CMV mini-cruise because he receives a lot of enquiries and bookings for the cruise line. For him, it was vital to see exactly what he is selling and understand what his customers can expect on their cruise.
For Academy Travel Counsellor, Leah Mackay, attending fam trips and other supplier events helps her to identify which cruise line, hotel or other product will suit different types of clients. Whether it’s an older couple looking to celebrate an anniversary or a young family in search of fun in the sun, having seen the clientele who have chosen a particular cruise line, destination or hotel, Leah can suggest the product that is going to be right for each individual client.
Travel Counsellors enjoy the flexibility of being self-employed, but this can bring concerns of feeling isolated when working from home. So not only are fam trips brilliant for increasing a Travel Counsellor’s knowledge, but they also help to build a sense of camaraderie and friendship between colleagues. Travel Counsellors can always count on each other for advice and can get in touch using a number of different methods. And since we are a business built on relationships, we understand there’s nothing like having a friend to turn to.
Since fam trips are first and foremost educational trips, itineraries can be jam-packed, and often exhausting. Our mini-cruise struck the perfect balance between time at leisure and planned activities. We experienced everything our ship, MV Columbus, had to offer and explored our ports of call, Amsterdam and Antwerp, over two days. However, the itinerary was flexible, and one Travel Counsellor arranged to visit a number of hotels in Antwerp instead of taking part in one of the excursions with the rest of the group. Since many of her clients who visit the city are business travellers, she felt it was a better use of her time and because she runs her own business, the decision didn’t have to be cleared by a manager.
In all, we had a thoroughly enjoyable time on our mini-cruise fam trip. We learnt an awful lot and were able to experience a Cruise and Maritime Voyage exclusive to us. We are all about keeping it personal, and our fam trips are no different.
