Each year, Luxury Travel Advisor introduces its Trendsetters, in which we highlight top advisors from the most prestigious luxury travel agencies across the United States and beyond. Now, to feature those who help make the Trendsetters the rock stars they are, we’re debuting Luxury Travel Advisor’s Road Warriors.
All of our 2019 Road Warriors are suppliers who were selected by our most recent batch of Trendsetters. First up, is Alessandra Bazzoni of IC Bellagio, where she has worked since 2011, just after meeting CEO Andrea Grisdale.
What’s Bazzoni’s secret to success? “Identify the need before the client knows they have it, achieve perfect and exceed expectations,” she tells Luxury Travel Advisor. In order to do this, Bazzoni, who is based in “a little village named Lezzeno, located just a few minutes from Bellagio on Lake Como,” says being a good listener is always important; she asks about the clients’ dream experiences, their must-haves and even their pet peeves. “The more I know, the better chance I can exceed their expectations.”
All of the “solutions” that IC Bellagio creates are tailormade to each guest—nothing is “off-the-rack,” as Bazzoni says—meaning Bazzoni personally sees to each request. The goal is making the advisor look like the superstar. When working on each trip, Bazzoni offers “input on how to organize everything in the best possible way and [suggests] exclusive, authentic and local experiences to make the advisors shine in the clients’ eyes.”
Just as it’s important for Bazzoni to understand the clients, she feels it’s equally important to have a strong relationship with the advisors. “I always try to build a personal relationship with the advisors I work with in order to have them feeling confident in our professionalism and inspired by our enthusiasm as their destination specialists.”
She continues: “The more I cultivate relationships with our travel advisors, the better I can deliver an amazing Italian experience.” Bazzoni adds it’s important to have a quick response time (within 24 hours) to any inquiry an advisor may have.
What helps Bazzoni understand the need of the advisor may be the couple months she spent working at an agency just after starting at IC Bellagio. On working at the agency, based in Canada, Bazzoni tells us it “not only gave me the opportunity to experience the way advisors work, but also to understand the different mentalities and how to improve the way we deal with the clients.”
It’s also important to test your own product, Bazzoni says. She travels around Italy often “in order to discover lesser-known areas, test the services we provide and keep me updated on all goings-on in order to be able to give to our clients the best possible suggestions and all the information that they might require.”
It’s a team effort, though, Bazzoni tells us. IC Bellagio hosts FAM trips and annual advisor board meetings, among others, to keep the advisors up to date on the potential of Italy. However, it’s more than just the destination. “At IC Bellagio, our success is in the people,” she says. “We cultivate long-lasting relationships with all, to make sure everyone we work with shares our passion for exceptional services, and thanks to our relationships, we can be more flexible and make the impossible possible.”
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