It All Comes Back To Relationships
What makes the travel industry so special?
I’ve talked about this obliquely before, but I want to address something more head-on here: relationships.
Personal relationships are what make the travel industry, at least in the luxury leisure space, so unique. At every step along the chain, from traveler to end-experience provider, relationships and social currency are what’s greasing the wheels and making the magic happen.
There’s a lot of talk, still, about how travel agents are a dying breed, how technology has usurped our role, how artificial intelligence will obliterate us in the future.
And, sure, Instagram seems to know me better than I know myself, at least when it comes to suggesting athleisure brands and ways I can feed myself without actually cooking. But the algorithm can’t quite pinpoint how the weight and stretch of a fabric is what nudges me to buy Outdoor Voices over Lululemon, or how my particular list of food dos and don’ts has so far defeated any delivery meal plan’s attempt to lure me onboard.
How do relationships in the travel industry develop, and why are they valuable to you, as a consumer?
For the most part, relationship building is done the old-fashioned way, face-to-face.
At coffee meetings, at industry shows like Virtuoso Travel Week, and at the site inspections I set up wherever I travel…each opportunity to meet and share strengthens the social currency that flows between advisors and suppliers for the benefit of travelers.
What do I mean by ‘suppliers’? It could be anyone from the national sales director of Aman to the millennial founder of Morocco’s leading destination management company to the vice president of the Private Suite at LAX – to pull a random selection from the contacts I made two weeks ago in Mexico at the ILTM conference.
Why is this important for you? There are two main reasons I attend these conferences - the first is that fostering these relationships provides more value for you. Having that connection makes it that much more likely that you’ll be at the top of the upgrade list; that you get exactly the cabana you want; that we can obtain that hard-to-get restaurant reservation.
The second reason these conferences are good for you and me both is that I go in with a shopping list of what I know my clients love. If you’re a fan of Aman properties, when I meet with the Aman sales director, we’re not just talking about their current slate of amazing properties – we’re also discussing the upcoming destinations in their development pipeline, so I can advise you that maybe you want to hold off on Cabo for a year…there’s a stunning new Aman headed there in late 2020.
It all comes back to relationships – my relationship with you, and my relationship with the property.
Put those two things together, and I magically create a relationship between the property and you, to ensure you get exactly what you want, exactly how you need it. That’s the Anthology difference.