Luxury Travel Advisor hosted its annual Ultra Summit at the PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, in May.
Mo Noubani of The Travel Box International; Janel Carnero of Embark Beyond and Scott Largay of Largay Travel joined Matt Turner, editor of Luxury Travel Advisor, on stage during the event to share their “New Strategies 2024 and Beyond: Innovations for a New World.” Topics ranged from email marketing to use of social media to sell and inspire travel, as well as how artificial intelligence will impact the luxury travel advisor space.
Matt Turner moderated the panel. Following is a synopsis of the discussion, edited for brevity.
Matt Turner, Luxury Travel Advisor: Mo, how do you handle industry changes?
Mo Noubani, Travel Box International: You always have to have someone with a strategy who understands how to be flexible enough to know when to change [that strategy]. We still have to have a consistent path in terms of what we’re doing with our business plan, but as our day-to-day operation goes, we have to have that flexibility to sometimes maneuver. It’s okay to say, “Wait a minute, this doesn’t work. Let me reassess the situation. Let’s take another look at this.”
Janel Carnero, Embark Beyond: I’m a newer advisor and so I’m evolving continuously to make sure that I’m staying ahead of my own clientele, and I’m marketing myself correctly to whom I am looking to gain as far as clients, and really positioning myself to be what they’re needing.
Right now, experience-based travel is moving like crazy. Everybody wants something elevated, something different and additional. Maybe they’ve been to Paris 10 times, so they want something different in Paris. They want to be able to come back and say, “Did you do this?” But shifts and changes are always going to be constant, you’ve just got to be prepared for it.
Artificial intelligence is coming into play so much. Everybody is talking about it in some way or another in terms of how are we integrating it, what are we doing to make sure that we’re staying ahead?
It’s just really continuously learning and diving in and giving it a shot.
Scott Largay, Largay Travel: I am the director of business strategy for Largay Travel. I’m also third generation within my company. So I have roots in the travel industry and I’ve seen a lot of things change over my entire lifespan, but especially over the last several years, especially post-COVID. The appreciation for the world is at its greatest because everybody was locked up for a period of time.
But with everybody back in business now, there’s an over-marketing, over-information problem that I’m seeing when it comes to communication, whether it’s with our own team of advisors or if you’re a member of a consortium, and then to the end client.
AI has actually been around for a while. It got a nice little catchphrase and in generative AI, but we’ve had Siri in our pockets for a while now, we’ve had search engine optimizations and all these different things for some time.
But as technology has advanced, so has the capability of being able to market to people and appear as if you are that person. We have found that as [destinations and suppliers] started to come back [post COVID] to try to stand out, because of technology and siloed information portals, people were being over-communicated to and not with personalized communication. That was a big problem that we had to address in various ways.
The question is how can you use AI tools to assist you with busy work so that you can do the type of work that you want to do? How can it help you communicate in an easier way with younger clients?
That’s a really interesting, big topic. I think that the old analytics are no longer the analytics that matter when it comes to social media marketing and email marketing.
There has to be a changing of philosophy when it comes to how we’re communicating in marketing and how the end user is looking to be communicated with on a personal level. That can be based on their travel styles or the destinations that they’ve said they really want to go to. Don’t market them things that they’ve told you that they’re not interested in because then they’re going to opt out.
The worst part of all of that is if somebody opts out of one campaign, the likelihood of getting them back is almost impossible. And they’re not only opted out of whatever that marketing campaign is, but they’re opted out of all of the future campaigns that you would do with any other supplier or partner. That’s something to be very careful of and to navigate correctly as you get into this new landscape of travel.
Matt Turner, Luxury Travel Advisor: There’s seemingly a disconnect as you talk about the over-saturation of digital marketing between the consortium, the agency, the advisor, and then down to the client. There are multiple levels of marketing coming from all these different angles. How do you navigate through that? As you said, Scott, you’re seeing higher opt-out rates than ever before and that’s going to hurt not just your current campaign but future campaigns.
Scott Largay, Largay Travel: It was an interesting time and it still is; it’s ongoing. One of the things that I’ve really tried to do is stop the siloed communication, especially when it comes to marketing, whether you’re a part of a consortium or your clients are on a supplier list because they’ve sailed with a cruise line, or whatever the case might be.
Because the technologies are not synced up, they’re operating on their own little siloed communication portals. That’s where the problem comes in. I could send Matt an email on a Monday from myself, but also because of technology, an email can also appear from Virtuoso or whatever your consortium as being from Scott Largay. And then an email from a direct supplier appearing as being from Scott Largay, and so the client’s going, why is Scott emailing me three times on a Monday morning? What is the matter with him? They’re not distilling the fact that it’s coming from different channels.
So we had to do a big stop on mass marketing so we could get control of the environment a bit more. We actually created our own proprietary technology so that we could have our own infrastructure. It was something that was important to us because as I mentioned before, we saw 36 percent higher opt-out rate than we’d ever seen in the history of our company over a six-month span.
So we looked at why that was happening and that was the main source. We completely cut off any kind of mass marketing in whatever way that we possibly could and slowly brought the knowledge to not only our team members, but to our supplier partners and the consortium that we’re working with. We said, “This is how we need to do business and this is why. It’s not like we’re just doing this because, hey, we don’t want you to be marketing to our clients, we want you to be marketing [just] to the clients that are looking for that content.” So that’s what we did on our end. Now we’re digging back into it and it’s still called mass marketing, but it’s more strategic marketing.
Matt Turner, Luxury Travel Advisor: Mo, I see you nodding your head.
Mo Noubani, Travel Box International: I absolutely agree. You also mentioned that being so saturated in the digital world, people really appreciate being back face to face.
We’re doing events to get that human interaction with people. We’ve done client appreciation events in different cities and countries, with red carpets and photographers to add some buzz. You’ve got to do those things to complement your digital marketing. We can’t just stay so honed in on just the digital aspect because there are so many other elements that we can do. What if we do an event and we get a $150,000 sale out of it?
Matt Turner, Luxury Travel Advisor: Janel, I know you are into client-facing events. Can you share a little bit more about what you do?
Janel Carnero, Embark Beyond: It’s really about getting out there, understanding the clientele that you’re looking to capture, and then creating something specifically for them. It’s not necessarily just saying, “Okay, I have a wine group, so I’m going to serve some wine.” No, we’re going to actually talk about wine, we’re going to understand wine, we’re going to dive deeper.
I recently did a watercolor class where I invited a bunch of people and we had this amazing event based off of watercolors, and I ended up getting some amazing women travel groups out of that. I wasn’t marketing to them, it was just something fun and different. It’s about doing something that is in your area and in your element of what is comfortable to you. What’s going to actually capture some people and want to bring them in?
Mo Noubani, Travel Box International: One thing we are very clear about, is we want to understand your personality before we even go into the booking. We make it very clear we’re looking for clients for life. We’re not looking for clients just for that booking. So it’s really important to us to understand because just like you said, you can do a wine tasting, you can do it in so many different ways. If you are an adventure lover, why not put you up on a crane and have a wine tasting up in the air! So you can do things, but you might be afraid of heights, so then let’s not do that. Let’s bring you to a wine cellar and bring it down there, whatever it is, there are little innuendos that we can put into it.
Scott Largay, Largay Travel: To both of your points, if people are looking for human connection, it’s not the same cookie-cutter events. They’re looking for a taste of that destination or experience. We just did a penguin party and we took over an aquarium for a partner where we brought in penguins and all the guests got to get their picture and pet the penguins and learn about them; it was for a strategic wildlife adventure itinerary. We just did another event with a candlelit concert series. They have thousands of candles lit with these orchestras. We did it with a partner who has classical music itineraries that they were trying to promote.
People are not looking to go to a banquet hall and look at a PowerPoint for an hour. They’re looking to get a taste and those “aha” moments of why a destination or a product should be of interest to them. It’s about being creative and giving them something fun in addition to some basic education. When it comes to marketing, a lot of supplier partners still focus on the sale, but they don’t focus on the basic education and inspiration, which is [why] one of my favorite speakers in the entire planet is Simon Sinek. And he says, start with “why.” And it’s the same thing when it comes to marketing, if you don’t start with the “why,” then you’re never going to get to that sale because it’s never going to be relevant or important to that person.
I’ve tried to tell my supply partners that [clients] are not going to care about the room product until they know what it’s like getting there and what a day in the life looks like there and whether there are things that are [of] interest to them in that destination or experience. That’s where our real skill set comes in, being able to take that information and then distill it towards that target audience, whether it’s getting up on the crane or not. I think that’s an important note to take home from this.
Matt Turner, Luxury Travel Advisor: Great points. And as we’re talking with the difference between your digital marketing or in-person marketing, yesterday we heard from Michael from The Olinger Group about the importance of social media when it comes to targeting those high-impact luxury travelers.
Matt Turner, Luxury Travel Advisor: Janel, you’ve already mentioned AI a couple of times. How are you implementing it with your business?
Janel Carnero, Embark Beyond: One of the biggest pieces that I use it for is my day-to-day calendar and my task list. So I use a program that’s called Motion. It integrates every single one of my calendars, including my personal calendars, into one for me, and it helps me to understand what my day-to-day actually looks like because we have a work calendar and we have a personal calendar. Those are two very different things, and they never, ever mesh well.
Now, with that, it starts integrating what you’re looking at for moving around appointments. If you have some time slots and you want to send some availability, or even if you have some task lists, let’s say I’m working on a big trip and I need to make sure that I’m remembering to do these 52 things that need to happen before the client goes. I can just talk into my AI and tell it exactly what I need to get done and by what dates. I can then continue working and doing what I need to do.
And it creates that for me. It’ll put it all into my calendar and remind me that little task lists for me to say, “Hey Janel, remember, you need to go ahead and call this hotel and make sure to send this VIP letter on this day. We need to collect final payment by this day.” It’s continuously reminding me on what I need to do for all of my clients so I’m always staying on top of it and I’m not missing anything. For me, that’s been crucial, especially with growing my own business. I need to be able to be ahead of the game in that essence and make sure that nothing is falling through the cracks because there are so many times that it can easily happen.
And so, this has been crucial for me. There are so many other features that it offers. You can go into all kinds of different channels and say, “I want to create a social media post that is personable and fun and about Mexico City,” and be very specific about what it is that you’re wanting to talk about. This is just a base. This just gives you a great overlying idea of, “Okay, I didn’t even think to word it this way,” or “I didn’t think to word it that way,” or “You know what? No, I didn’t like that at all, AI. Can you please redo that whole thing and send it back to me?”
This will give you a ton of options instead of trying to sit there and think, “Okay, how am I going to write this up?” I’m not a writer. I’m not the person whose words just flow out when I’m trying to write something beautiful. It’s not going to happen. It’s never going to be me. So why stress myself out for a good hour trying to create one social media post when I can get the ideas and everything [I need] from this within a minute?
And again, [I can] change it based off of my voice, my experiences, and my own interpretation of how I felt when I was in Mexico City, and then just reword it. Now something that would’ve taken me an hour and stressed me out, [making me feel like] I need a shot of tequila or something, now takes me two minutes. It’s amazing. But again, it’s just finding what works for you. There are so many different AI capabilities out there and it’s just, what’s your pain point? What is the most frustrating thing for you? Okay, now let’s just find a program that’s going to help with that specifically. Start there and then start building it.
Matt Turner, Luxury Travel Advisor: Mo, are you using AI at all?
Mo Noubani, Travel Box International: I couldn’t agree more with what you were saying with getting ideas. Even when we are writing the one email that we all dread that we have to send out, and we’re like, “God, how do I start this one? How do I close it?” And you keep putting it off and off and off and off. We’re playing around with it because that whole arena is changing so much, and we’ve got so much on the line with these clients; that human element has to come back into play.
Janel Carnero, Embark Beyond: I did want to say one more thing about the AI aspect. I have had quite a few different people come to me with their created itineraries off of AI. So what I do is I honestly lean into it: “Okay, great. Give me what you’ve created because now I have some inspiration of what you were looking for. Oh, I see you’re looking for a castle in Ireland. That one actually isn’t in Ireland, but let me show you the one that is.” And that’s where the exciting fun part is for me because now that expertise comes through for them and they can see me and what I’m talking about. But also, they might not know what they’re looking for and they’ll come to me and be like, “Oh my God, I want to go to the Caribbean.”
They could be all over the place whenever I’m talking to them, but if they do come to me with their own little itinerary, now it’s like, “Okay, I see that you’re interested in these types of things. So now let me create this for you based on what you were really looking for.” And maybe give you something in most times, more than not, even more of what you didn’t even know that you could have because AI has an idea of what there really is sometimes. And sometimes AI comes up with some stuff and I’m like, “I have no idea about this. Let me come look into this myself real quick.” But it’s just that fun part of just leaning into it. Don’t look at it as something that’s just going to be the end all because it’s really not. It’s just there to help in some way or another, in one aspect or many.
Matt Turner, Luxury Travel Advisor: That’s a great point because I’m assuming a lot of folks here may say they have clients coming to them with an itinerary created from ChatGPT, and they say, “That’s not what I do. If you think that’s what I can do, you’re totally mistaken because I can do so much more.” And I would also tell them, go back to that client and say, “Hey, I missed my connecting flight and my flight was just canceled. What do I do?” And I plug that into ChatGPT and it says, “Contact the airline.” I’m like, “Oh, thank you. I had no idea.” ChatGPT is not going to be there to help them when things go wrong. It’s not going to be there to assist in real time like you guys can.
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