This past month my family and I hit a few milestones.  Our son is two months old. Our daughter is 20 months old.   My wife and I also just celebrated our 15^th anniversary.  We started the “kid thing” a bit late so we’re finding we’re more tired than we imagined.  Don’t get me wrong, my children have shown me a love I never knew existed, but there are times I wonder how people make it look so easy.

On our anniversary day, my wife and I woke to a crying little guy that was letting us know it was time to feed him. My wife said to me “Fifteen years ago today, we were on Crete, with all our family and friends, walking to the tiny chapel to get married. Happy Anniversary!“   As the second child started to cry (as if just to mock us), I replied “I’d rather be waking up on Crete right now.”  My wife knew exactly what I meant, but I’ll explain it for you.

My wife and I were planning one of those obnoxious five-hour, over-priced weddings that was causing its fair share of arguments. Who would we invite? Who would sit next to whom? What food would we serve? What about the band? (You know the drill.)  When the guest list hit 250 and in a moment of frustration, I said to my wife “For this kind of money, we could take our closest family members to Greece, invite our best friends, and have a great wedding.”  She replied “Really? Let’s just do that!”  In one of those rare instances we agree on something so quickly, we just went with the flow.

I used to own a Greek tour company (Zeus Tours), so it was actually quite easy.  We invited our friends and family and all headed to the Elounda Beach Hotel on the island of Crete.  There were about sixty of us (half from the USA and the rest was family and friends from Greece).  For each couple, we had reserved a private bungalow right on the water.  From the exterior, the bungalows were (at the time) traditional “looking” but the interior was a different story. Each lavish bungalow was filled with beautiful marble floors, hand-crafted furniture and came complete with every amenity you can imagine (entertainment systems, satellite TV, climate control systems, spa tubs, some even with private swimming pools, and more).  (Just a note, the resort, one of “The Leading Hotels of the World” is now is even more amazing, with various types of accommodations and is clearly one of the finest resorts in all of Europe.  Another favorite of mine in the same area is the very deluxe Minos Beach Art Hotel. )

We had a beautiful ceremony in the tiny chapel right on the property.  This was followed by an awesome party right on the water’s edge, complete with traditional musicians, a ten-foot grill filled with sumptuous meats and just-caught seafood and uncountable carafes of delicious local wine.  The party lasted through the night, in the open air and under millions of stars that are so brilliant in the Greek islands. It was like a dream. Better yet, the entire group stayed four days so it was one long party.

In the morning, we’d awake and order room service, with an assortment of freshly baked croissants, local cheese, fresh jams and the most amazing, Greek yogurt with silky, sweet honey.  All served to us on the patio just feet from the Aegean. We’d then head to the little private beach and spend the day with those we loved. After everyone left, we continued our honeymoon for three more weeks going to other islands and coming back to the Elounda Beach for a few days before heading home.

Fast forward fifteen years.  Sure, we love our life.  We wouldn’t trade a moment of it. Every once in a while though, it’s easy to wish we were waking up to the sound of the sea lapping the shore and to the smell of fresh croissants.

As a Tripologist, you know that you shouldn’t be selling travel, rather you should be selling dreams. Our consumers are looking to our Tripologists to make dreams like this happen.  No matter what the economy is doing, people are going to get married.  A small little destination wedding is the perfect alternative to a traditional overpriced wedding.  Someone should really be advertising something like “Save money! Have a destination wedding and use the savings to put a down payment on a house!”

So, this is going to be somewhat of an unusual post for me.  I’m writing about someone else’s product, but I think it’s especially helpful for us in travel.

I’ve been in the travel and technology fields for 20 years. I spend much of my time traveling, going to meetings and tradeshows, just like all of you.  One challenge has always been what to do with the HUNDREDS of business cards I and my staff collect during every trip.  (Back-to-back shows could mean a thousand cards.) Luckily, many of the shows now offer badge scanners, but not all of them do for some reason.

So, after we bring the cards home, we enter them into Outlook, typing out each one. Then we export them to Salesforce.com.  After a while, this seemed to be such a pain, we bought a card scanner (that is linked to salesforce.com). That was about $250 and as it turns out, more trouble than it is worth. First you scan it. Then you have to correct the scan because they don’t all get read correctly (especially with the cool looking cards).  So, we’ve opted to go back to typing them… but that’s a big data entry cost when you consider staff time. So now we’re hiring interns to do the typing.  I’ve seen some people at other companies let the bulk of the collected cards sit on their desks. Stacks and stacks of them, waiting to be typed. Each stack with a sticky note on the top reminding them of what show they’re from. (Not the greatest sales people I would say).

Just yesterday, I heard about CloudContacts.com.  It’s simple; mail them your cards and they take them and do all the entry for you. CloudContacts allows you to access your contacts at any time online or you can import your business cards into many email applications and connect on most business social networks.  The fee is reasonable; $30 for up to 100 cards or $99 for up to 500 cards.  That’s twenty to thirty cents each, a couple of dimes. My time has to be worth more than that, right?  I think so. We’re going to try them this week.  See www.cloudcontacts.com

The Tripology team and I were at the Ensemble Travel conference last week at Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, and I was happy to hear, throughout the conference, that only true vacation ‘specialists’ can be successful in this rough economy.  From Jack Mannix’ opening speech, to the various general sessions speakers, it was clear that what we’ve been preaching at Tripology – “SPECIALIZE, SPECIALIZE, SPECIALIZE” is being embraced by one of the most successful agent groups out there.

In speaking to dozens of agents, we didn’t feel the panic about the economic situation that is being so prominently being communicated both to the general public and within the travel industry.  The agents are open to hearing about new tools to help their business thrive, and loved the fact that Tripology understands the need for travel specialists with real expertise.  Jonas Rolyn, from Holidays Land & Sea and one of our successful Tripologists, was thrilled to see that Tripology is now a preferred partner of Ensemble, and praised us to the other members.     

The attendees were smart and savvy business people with solid plans for the future, who understand that not all clients are booking right now, but will be in the near future and will look to those who help plan their trips early on to help them book.  Welcome to all of our new partners and kudos to SPECIALISTS!   

You know what I love about working at a small, aggressive, nimble, very tech-savvy company? You can talk to your customers, ask their advice, do what they asked and implement changes all in a matter of weeks.

Well, you asked for it – you got it! We listened to our Tripologists’ suggestions and comments and are pleased to announce the launch of our enhanced travel specialist portal.  When accessing www.tripology.com/agent as a registered Tripologist, you will now be able to:

v More easily set your profiles and lead filters:  Within your profile, you’ll now be able to expand the number of destinations in which you specialize.  Your lead filters might need to be revised to allow for some new and exciting features like being able to opt-out of domestic air-only leads but opt-in to international air-only leads.  

v  Provide additional information about your business for improved personalization: You’ll be able to tell us about your consortium or host-agency affiliation and provide additional data that will assist us in personalizing your Tripology experience. 

v  Select specific destinations for each type of service specialty in which you focus: You can now enter the individual services that you provide for each specific destination.  For example, if you specialize in Italian villa bookings and all-inclusive resorts in Jamaica, you may now indicate both of these specialties.  It is crucial to check your destinations and make sure that the services you provide for those destinations are listed in your profile.  Also important, if you book cruise packages that contain other services, you need to ensure that you have listed flights, hotels, ground transportation, etc.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE:  Please update your Tripology profile by November 30th, 2008 to ensure you’ll be able to take full advantage of the above enhancements.  Click here to begin.

Tripology.com is temporarily unavailable (as of 11pm ET) for Tripologists as we make some exciting upgrades to the site.

Once the site is back up and running, we will post an update here.  We expect that you will wake up to a much-improved site.

Stay tuned and thanks for using Tripology!

I’ve always been real good at preaching about life balance, but unfortunately, I’ve never been very effective about actually doing it for myself.  That is, until my daughter was born nearly two years ago.

For the past twenty months, Thursday has been “Daddy’s day.”   I get home by 5, eat dinner with my daughter (just the two of us), go for a short walk around the neighborhood, push her on the swings for a while (while she says “weeeeeee”), take her back home, give her a bath, read her a few books (never missing a word or she’ll make me start over) and put her to sleep.

I love Thursdays. No matter how hard a day or week I’m having, Thursday is always the best day of the week.  Walking in the door to be greeted by a running little girl screaming “Daddy!” is the best feeling in the world.  

Sure we spend plenty of other time together, but Thursdays are special. As you can imagine, I travel, so if I’m away, we reschedule to the very next day I’m home. Thursdays simply can’t be skipped and forgotten.

My daughter doesn’t care about Google traffic, the stock market or email open rates. She loves flowers, pumpkins,  our “puppies” (one of which is so old he hasn’t been called a puppy in a decade by anyone else), goldfish (the orange crackers you eat)  and the color pink.  I love these things as well and always will.

So, this is a short post to remind you to stop, breathe and smell the roses. Life is a gift. Treasure each moment.  Tell someone you miss them. Pay someone a compliment. Do something nice for someone without asking for something in return.  At the risk of trying to commercialize an otherwise heartfelt post, call a few clients just to say hello and ask how they’re doing.  Like my mother always said, “Be nice to people and they’ll be nice to you.”  Who knows, you might actually hear “funny you called, I was thinking about starting to plan our March trip…”

I went to high-school in Northern Bergen County, New Jersey.  Lush hills, lots of homes, estates and buildings all converted into classrooms.  Penny loafers, chinos and blue blazers. You get the picture; preppyville.

 This past Saturday, I went to my 25th reunion, expecting to hear about the horrors of the economy and the impact on everyone’s travel plans…. But wait…. You’re going where? The Maldives? When? In a couple of weeks?   And you? You’re going to Australia? In a month?  And you… you’re just planning a trip to China for February?

 Wait.  What’s going on here?  I thought no one is going to travel?  Apparently not everyone in the luxury market got the memo that travel should be curtailed (okay, the Wall Street guys did, but not everyone works on Wall Street.)  Doctors, lawyers and other professionals are taking vacations. I’ll tell you what though; everyone is looking for value, bargains and unique experiences.  They’re not necessarily looking for “cheap” mind you, but they are looking for a good deal.

 What’s a travel specialist to do?  I like what Warren Buffet says regularly “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.” Many are retreating now, cutting marketing expenses. Yet, on TV, I see one Perillo Tours ad after another.  (I should add they’re also advertising Hawaii and Israel, not just their core Italy product!) In shrinking NY Times Travel sections, I continue to see full page Liberty Travel ads. Why do you think that is?  Simple; these companies are getting more bang for their buck.  Fewer companies are advertising so they’re getting more exposure then they normally would.

 So, am I suggesting you run out and place full-page ads in the newspaper or run TV spots? No. However, now is a great time to build your database with high-intent travelers.  Give them advice, offer suggestions on new and interesting places, start a rapport (and eventually a relationship with them).  Get a good mix of luxury, adventure and senior travelers (in the theory of not keeping all your eggs in one basket).

Is everyone going to BUY from you this week?  No. But gather everyone’s name and travel preferences. Start marketing to them and KEEP marketing to them in a tactical targeted fashion. Sooner or later, they’ll be ready to take a trip and if you’ve done everything correctly, it’ll be your unique trip suggestion that got them traveling.  One piece of advice though; be pertinent with your information. Are you a Vegas specialist? Then you’d better be telling them about all the specials and discounts available at hotels, shows and even restaurants.  Are you a Hawaii specialist? Then you’d better be mentioning the great deals available.  Are you a family reunion specialist? Then you’d better be talking about the family reunion trend happening in the Caribbean.   Now is not the time to regurgitate official rates. Get in there and “kick it up a notch” when it comes to offering specials and unique, affordable trips.  Finally, remember that even the luxury market is looking for good values.

In this economy, you might be wondering if you should continue buying leads at the same rate you have been for the past months. You might even be considering cutting all your marketing spend right now. Let me give you the other side of the coin. Some of our top Tripologists are buying more leads than they usually do!  Here’s why.

I’m a big fan of staying busy and always continuing the hunt for new customers, no matter what the economy is doing.  Why?  This is a rather simplistic answer, but travel is part of who and what we are.  Sure, we can hunker down for a while, especially while the economy takes a beating, but one thing for sure; we’re always THINKING about our next vacation.  For many, thinking involves planning.    Being a part of a person’s planning stage (by offering advice and a quotation), even if they’re not traveling for, say, six months, is critical.  What’s the alternative?  NOT being part of someone’s planning? That wouldn’t be an option for me if I were a travel specialist.  Guess how likely you are to get their business (when they decide to book) if you’re not part of their planning stage? Zero. Zippo. No chance.

So, we’re finding many Tripologists are at the very least, continuing to buy leads at the same rate as they were a month ago.  Some of our biggest fans are buying even more than they normally would.  Sure, some consumers are a little slower to “pull the trigger” and book their vacation right now.  Others however, continue to research their trips and take vacations.  Don’t forget, Tripology is all about the more complex trips and the mid to higher end of the market.  The luxury market is normally less impacted by a souring economy.  At the end of the day, September was one of our best months ever as far as the quantity of leads received.  Our high-intent consumers continue to look for good value and they continue to search for the most qualified travel specialists.  

You should be cutting SOME costs, right? Sure, you should be cutting operational costs in your business.  Go through your budget. You’ll know what you can cut.  However, as far as targeted marketing is concerned, this is a good time to keep plugging away and forging forward. I’m not saying you shouldn’t measure against benchmarks.  You should always be doing that. For example, are you doing any generic “brand-building” type ads? You can lose those for a while.  Stay focused and tactical.

This is a good time to offer expert advice to as many people as you can.  After you give them advice or a quotation, stay (and keep) in touch with them.  This way, when they’re ready to book, you’re top of mind.  Plus, by doing this, you’re cultivating your database, the most critical aspect of your business. 

In summary, if you’re looking for new potential customers, here are two ideas.  1) Call your local newspaper and offer to write an article on unique, affordable trips. I would bet they’d be interested.  They may interview you or if they’re a small paper, they may even let you write the article.  Let everyone know you’re a travel expert.  Become the authority on a special type of travel and it will pay off eventually.  People will find you.  2) Tripology has loads of high-intent travelers looking for travel specialists.  Sign-in to your account and start grabbing those leads. Selling is a numbers game; the more people you reach out to the more sales you’ll get.  If you don’t have an account, what exactly are you waiting for?  Are you so busy that you don’t have time to find new customers?

In case you’re asking “Who is this guy anyway?” here is a brief intro.   I’m John T. Peters (aka Yiannis Eleftherios Petropouleas).   Petropouleas got shortened to “Peters” when my uncle and father came over from Greece and went into the US military). I assume you’ve seen “My Big Fat Greek Weeding”?  It was filmed at my house.  Well, not really, but it could have been, short of the plastic covers on the couch (even if we did have these, I’d deny it) and the Windex (I’m not sure where they got that).

For Greeks, it’s customary to name your first son after your father and then you give him your name as his middle name. My father had 13 (yes, thirteen) brothers and sisters. Each of my paternal grandparents lived to be 100 (or so they thought because they didn’t really know how old they were).  So, I’m one of four John Peters.  This is why my middle initial is so important to me.  “T” is for Terry, my father.   He came over to America with my uncle in the 40’s and worked the docks, started a travel business and the rest is a great American Dream story.  Together they brought over a million Greeks to this country. Next time you’re enjoying your cheeseburger deluxe at your favorite diner, you really should toast my father and uncle. In case you want to actually read more about the family, there have been a couple of books written. Really, it’s a fascinating story. 

To illustrate the comedic aspect of being Greek, recently at my cousin John’s wedding, the groomsmen list read: John T. Peters, John E. Peters and John C. Peters.  It looked like a typographical error. 

So, now you know about my heritage and why I use my middle initial all the time.  You also now know I grew up in the travel business.  To bring this full circle, I’ve spent the last 20 years working in the travel business, always having a focus on technology.  

I take a lot of pride in my work.  I’m very proud to be here at Tripology. We have a great team of professionals (ironically all of them younger than I – more on that later) and we’ve got some of the best technology around.  I love the travel industry and I love travel specialists. So, check back soon for more.

Hello Tripologists! I hope you like our new blog format.

As for me joining in the fun, I’m finally going to jump in.  I’m putting my thoughts to paper (ok, please – spare me, BLOG).  Sure I kept a journal for years and yes, my friends made fun of me, saying I kept a “diary.”  Whatever!  Call it what you want. 

I’ll be writing all about the travel and lead-generation industries, technology, my favorite (and least favorite) travel experiences, the economy and some other incredibly important topics.  These include my wife, my children and my enormous Greek family, all of whom influence me in a myriad of ways.  I’ll obviously also be writing about Tripology, because I think this is one of the coolest companies around.

With our blogs, we endeavor to:

1.    Share our voice.  Through our blogs you’ll find out who we really are.  Not just our names, but our personalities.

2.    Share our passion. We’ve started these blogs because we love travel and Tripology is our obsession.

3.    Share our story. Travel with us; theoretically, figuratively and literally throughout the world.

4.    Keep things simple. Our blog posts will be short, fun, timely and relevant.

5.    Keep things interesting.  We’ll challenge you sometimes – so please feel free to return the favor. 

6.    Try, try and try again. We hate being bored so we will continue to change, modify, tweak and morph. 

7.    Keep things pleasing to look at and read. We hope you like the format. 

8.    Think outside the box. We’re a creative group.  We may get a little daring sometimes. Be sure to join us in the fun.

 My posts will be shorter versus longer.   I’ll save the long ramblings for the next travel trade show “meeting” (aka meet-up at the hotel lobby bar.)

 :) jtp