Travel Masters Podcast
Founded by travel goddess and CEO of Small World Big Fun, Cindy Minor and sales training expert Morris Sims, The Travel Masters Learning Community (click the link and join us there too) is here to help you grow in the world of travel and achieve greatness!
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Travel Masters Podcast
Experience More for Less with GOING
Can you imagine finding the most affordable flights and curated travel guides all in one place, simplifying your clients' travel planning? Discover how Katy Nastro, spokesperson for GOING, shares industry secrets on how their platform is revolutionizing the travel advisory world. With her rich background as a travel writer and event professional, Katie offers insights into how GOING's services complement travel advisors and agencies, ensuring you provide immense value to your clients with expert advice, practical tips, and timely updates.
Ever wondered how to make unforgettable travel memories without breaking the bank? This episode uncovers the record-breaking travel statistics from 2024 and the increasing trend of prioritizing experiences over material possessions. Learn how platforms like GOING are making air travel more accessible and affordable, while also easing the workload for travel advisors. We emphasize the lasting impact of creating cherished travel memories and the transformative power of exploring new destinations with loved ones.
Curious about the secrets to optimizing your productivity and managing time effectively while balancing a busy travel advisory career? We delve into techniques inspired by books like "The 5 AM Club," and explore the value of premium economy deals. Katie also shares practical tips on experiencing economy class to better understand the average traveler. Plus, we celebrate the formation of new relationships through travel and express our gratitude to Katie for her significant contributions. Tune in to elevate your travel advisory skills and harness the power of GOING to enhance your clients' travel experiences.
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Welcome to the Travel Masters podcast. We're here to help travel advisors and travel agency owners get what they really want from their business. I'm Morris Sims and I'm going to be your host for our podcast. I'm an ex-chemical engineer turned life insurance agent. I got to tell you selling life insurance was a lot more fun for me than being an engineer. After a few years, they asked me to teach other people how to do what I was doing. And well, long story short, we wound up in New York City for 20 years. That was quite a change for a young Alabama boy. I retired after 20 years as the vice president and chief learning officer, where my team and I trained over 12,000 agents and their managers to be independent business owners and sales professionals. Now I'm not one to stop working, so I started my own business and I was blessed to find a sweet spot with travel professionals that I was able to help. Now I've got several travel agency consulting clients and I'm the co-founder of the Travel Masters Learning Community, where we provide opportunities for travel professionals to become more effective, efficient and to get what they want from their business.
Speaker 1:On this podcast, I'm going to be interviewing guests that I believe are going to have a message that can be of help to you. Our travel professional community and I'll do some solo episodes as well with some other stuff that I really think can help you in your business. So, with all that said, hey, let's get this party started with today's episode. What do you say? Our guest today on the Travel Masters podcast is Katie Nastro. Katie is the spokesperson for GOING.
Speaker 1:Now, I don't know about you. I didn't know what GOING was or what it is. So I learned a lot by getting to meet Katie and wanted to introduce her to you guys as well, because I think there's some things here, some resources, that you're going to be able to use to help your clients, especially when it comes to air travel, which can be such a pain in the neck. So Katie is here to help us figure out how to make that a little bit easier and how to help you make your job a little more straightforward, a little more streamlined, if you will, and save you some time and energy and give you something else that you can hold up to your clients and say I'm providing you with this service, and that's always what it comes down to and what it's all about. So I'm going to hush now and introduce Katie. Katie, thank you for being here. Really glad you're here today.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me, Morris. Yeah, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1:So tell us a little bit about what you do. Who is Katie and what do you do with going, and how does this all come together?
Speaker 2:Yeah, all good questions. Well, so I am the spokesperson for Going as well as a dedicated travel expert at Going, and basically what Going does is we help people travel more affordably around the world, providing them with flight deals so one magical flight deal at a time so they can take those bucket list trips and save money while doing so, as well as providing insights and expertly curated guides that, you know, boots on the ground have created. We're a fully remote team, so we travel quite a bit. I actually am coming to you from San Francisco, which is not my home state. I'm a New York gal Personally. Yeah, I grew up in New York. I dedicated the last few years, last decade, really working as a freelancer on professional sports events, so sailing events all around the world, as well as a freelance travel writer, and through that I found my way to going. I'm always planning my next trip, so I found that this podcast is definitely of interest, just to be able of talk shop, I guess, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well, kitty. Knowing that most of our audience we're travel advisors and travel agency owners, how does going relate to what a good travel advisor does in today's world?
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, you know you are really the expert resource for your clients, just like we are a resource for our you know 2 million plus subscribers. We're trying to add that value. You know why would somebody want to use our product or service? Or why, for example, why would somebody want to book travel with you? All you want to.
Speaker 2:I always say, like, show, don't tell, you know what can you provide them that's going to equip them to have the best trip ever. You know. So, like, for example, whenever I'm in an airport, I sort of strike up random conversations with people to just sort of see you know where they're going, what they're doing. You know, have they ever been to this destination before? And then see how I can use my expertise to provide them with some sort of snippet that they walk away with, that they didn't know or it's helpful to them, and then they remember you know what going does just from the basis of our conversation. So you know it's really providing that value.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, you know what can you? It might not be as sexy as you know the most Instagrammable spots in Capri, you know, like providing with those type of that type of information, but there is something to be said with providing them value to be able to be a smarter traveler. You know it might not be sexy to talk about new DOT regulations, but it is helpful at the end of the day. And when people are getting those you know compensation not compensation, excuse me when they're getting their refunds for a flight that they didn't take because of a significant delay or cancellation, you know they're going to remember the conversation that they had with us or that they had with you, to be able to equip them with that knowledge.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, absolutely. It's all about the professional knowledge and ability to help people get what they want. I truly believe that. But before we go any further, though, just in case there's somebody out there like me who doesn't really know what going is or what it does, why would I want to be a part of going? What is it? I'm a member of going if I wanted to do this, and then what does that do for me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. So we are a website in the email service as well as an app. So you can we really touch all forms of digital comms. These days. You know you can get push notifications for our deals, but basically you sign up using a dedicated home airport that you want those you want to be sent deals from. So, for example, I live in New York. I get flight deals from JFK to places all over the world. We serve over 200 airports in the US only over the world. We serve over 200 airports in the US only. We used to serve airports outside of the states, but during COVID we really wanted to sort of dial it back and just really best serve our members that were based here in the US. Maybe in the future we'll expand, but for right now we are just US serving.
Speaker 1:So this is all about air travel and air prices and deals on air travel. Air travel and air prices and deals on air travel Is that right?
Speaker 2:Correct, we just do flight deals. In the future that might change. But our content is dedicated to travel holistically, so we have destination guides, we have our in-the-know newsletter and, by the way, all of our travel content. That is all free. You don't have to be a dedicated paying member to be able to have access to that.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool. So I can go to the Going site and get to all that wonderful information the things that you put on about all your travels For sure. Well, I tell you what y'all you need to go check out Katie's Instagram, no matter what. She's got some beautiful travel pictures on there. It's just absolutely amazing some of the places she's been.
Speaker 1:The key here is, though, that going could be a resource to you and your clients that maybe you don't know about today, and it might be a way to make it easier for your clients to deal with air travel, especially if you're not dealing with it and I know a bunch of you just have decided not to do that. You let your client deal with the air travel. This may be a way you can provide them service by saying you need to go check out some things here ongoing, and you're there to help. Y'all get the idea, I bet, probably faster and better than I could describe it, but the key is it's a resource for you. It's something that's going to help you, help your clients, so it just makes all kinds of.
Speaker 2:Right, no, that's Morris, that's totally true. You know, even if it's not, you know, in the short term monetarily, you know helping your business, that person is more likely to come back to sort of get yourself up to speed for destinations you've never been to or areas of the industry that you might not necessarily be super on top of. We try in our In the Know newsletter to try to stay incredibly up to speed on industry happenings and that's a lot of information coming in. How do you digest that efficiently and then be able to give that to your clients, you know, in the most approachable way. Nobody wants to sit there and read the fine print, so you can be that fine print translator. You know that's worth its weight in gold.
Speaker 1:Oh, it really is, especially for the executive that doesn't want to take the time to deal with it themselves. And I say executive business owner, the guy that runs the car dealership down the street, all these business people. Just like you, we don't have a lot of extra time to go out and research our next vacation Right, our next vacation. But we do know. But we do know, jane and Kelly and Melissa and Heidi and all these other people that we can call, all these travel advisors that you can call and depend on them to have all the information and the knowledge. It sounds like going is a great place to get some of that information and knowledge, as well as some great deals on air travel.
Speaker 2:Correct yeah, you know we're here to help is really, at the end of the day, you know it's not just you know, vacation planning, it's also those trips that you maybe need to take. You know you're going to a wedding, or you know you have these, these, these travel plans that are inflexible, but you don't want to be spending a ton on airfare and, like, we're here to help you avoid doing so where you know, a lot of folks just sort of uh, throw up their hands and purchase tickets last minute just because they need to go somewhere and end up way overpaying for flights when they don't need to. And that's really, at the end of the day, what we want to help with, as well as, yeah, making or just equipping people with the knowledge to be better travelers all around.
Speaker 1:Oh, it makes perfect sense, it really does, and it sounds like such a symbiotic relationship with a travel advisor to have a handle on going and being able to use and recommend it to their clients, so that the travel advisor doesn't have to worry about trying to figure out all the ins and outs of which airline and all the crap that goes along with traveling on air. Nowadays, right and frankly, the airlines aren't paying any, or, if they are, very minimal amount of commission to travel advisors right now anyhow, so a lot of folks don't even deal with it anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know that's it's. It's really changing the model of what a travel agent looks like, because you're taking sort of that away, which is really interesting. But on the flip side, we are seeing more people travel than ever before. You know, 2024 has broken numerous records. We had the busiest month ever recorded by the TSA this past June. We had eight out of the 10 busiest days ever in 2024 recorded by the TSA this past Sunday, july 7th over 3 million people traveling in a single day after the July 4th holiday, which is just demonstrating that more people are traveling ever than before, not just in the way of revenge travel, but just putting their resources towards experience spending. And travel is at the top of everybody's list. So it appears.
Speaker 1:Well, we're all into. I say we all are, but many of us are much more into the experiences that we can have and the experiences we can generate for our family than we are in a new car or a new this, that or the other. For the kids I'd much rather take my kids on a trip somewhere, or my grandkids on a trip somewhere, than, you know, even when they're a little bit older, going to Disney, I mean, you know.
Speaker 2:Right, geez, yeah, yeah, like making memories are really going to have that light, that long-lasting impact, far beyond what you know, when a kid gets sick of a toy or you know some sort of product. So it's it's really, yeah, travel is, it's it's good for the soul, you know it's good for the brain and it's it's good to just yeah, you will never regret, you will. You're far, like far less likely to regret a trip that you take, even if it's terrible. It's an experience and it's going to shape your view of the world and you know, yeah, have a lasting impact far beyond the time that you took the trip on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean just that example I got if I took all four of our and I had to think there for a minute because one of them is still, because one of them is still in process Don't know when that one will be born yet, but it's coming up. The fact is those four grandkids, eight parents or no two, four parents and Carla and I, I think that makes 10. 10 people with seats on an airplane, that's probably going to be a bigger investment than five days at Walt Disney World, depending on what I say, and you know I mean unless going helps me find a better deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no for sure, and I think a lot of people have this connotation that air travel is super expensive or it's the most expensive it's ever been. But actually, in fact, air travel it's the lowest it's been. Average price of airfare is the lowest it's been in since 2009,. June of 2009. So the last 15 years the latest data came out, you know it's down month over month, 5% down, almost over 20% from June of 2022, when airfare was at absolute peak. So it's really, you know, you don't have to be a millionaire to be able to afford a flight.
Speaker 2:These days, it's we're living in the golden age of cheap flights. You know, in my line of work it's sort of a catch 22 because I see all these incredible flight deals that are coming in. For example, we saw, you know, just below 800, it was like about $799 round trip direct flights from New York to Tokyo at the end of August into September, and I almost purchased that myself because that's, you know, that's, it's somewhere I want to go back to and that's such a good price, especially at the end of summer, which is historically a peak season, and super expensive Wait a minute, katie, wait a minute Time out here.
Speaker 1:You travel so much. You're not telling me you would travel to Tokyo in main cabin, would you?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I very, very, very, very rarely fly business class, really, that's a surprise. Really Yep. Well, a lot of folks think that you know, because you work for a travel company, you're traveling based on the company's dime. That's not really the case. You know, we are boots on the ground, travelers as in. You know, we are spending our heart and dollars to, to, to travel the way that most people would. And you know I yeah, I sit in economy very. I have traveled to Australia 12 times and every single time has been an economy.
Speaker 1:So there you go. I went to India twice on business and the company I was consulting with did put me in business class with Emirates, and it was a marvelous experience.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh yeah.
Speaker 1:I prayed for all the folks back there in economy I mean.
Speaker 2:I'm short, I don't have the issue of tall person length that I have to deal with when I'm sitting in those cramped economy seats. So you know I'm lucky in that fact. But you know, the older I get I am sort of prioritizing those bulkhead seats and definitely looking at premium economy a little bit closer. And you know that's again you know, another great reason why uh going is a great resource. We don't just do economy deals, we do premium economy, business class, first class saving upwards. So you know, 40 to 90, 40 to 80 percent off, uh, most, most fair types. So you know it's, it's not just for the traveler that's looking to rack up passport stamps or, you know, go in quantity across country. You know domestic travel, we are helping every type of traveler out there.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I should take advantage of the premium economy deals a little bit more is what you're highlighting.
Speaker 1:Well, you obviously must have a very nice miles account with a number of different airlines. So, yeah, some way or another. But I had a boss that said it one time, and he's absolutely right A luxury once enjoyed becomes a necessity, so be careful.
Speaker 2:Right, right. And also, you know, I think it would do myself a disservice to not travel in economy because then you know, with majority of people traveling in economy on most planes you know you're not providing a holistic view of how majority you know an average traveler is going to travel.
Speaker 2:If I'm just talking about the really nice Emirates cabin or Qatar Airways or any one of those beautiful long-haul flights in business or first class, I'm not providing value to a majority of people. If I'm only providing a real that. I'm not providing value to majority of people If I'm only talking about that.
Speaker 1:Katie, you're in the business of finding people to talk to and getting out there and traveling and and you've got a I'm sure you've got a very busy schedule because of that. Tell us, how do you manage your time? I mean, we've all got 24 seven. It's not time management anymore. It's about how I manage myself within the time I have allotted. How do you handle it? Everybody does it a little bit differently and it's just a question I like to ask everybody how do you handle your time?
Speaker 2:That is a loaded question, morris, because I'm constantly trying to figure out how to get more time in the day, work time in the day. But I I am just in the final few chapters of the 5am club, which is a really great book. I know it's only a couple years old now, but it really is. It's it's, you know, own your morning on your day type of mentality and, being as somebody that is a morning person, I do find that I do my best work and I just feel so much more accomplished with my time and my day by doing and achieving in the morning hours versus trying to my 3 pm. Brain is not Katie, that's like. That is not optimal Katie, that is far far from it. So, yeah, I really think that and I hate it.
Speaker 2:I avoid things, like most people, that are difficult. You know, I'm a procrastinator by nature, but I've been conditioning myself to prioritize and tackle those bigger projects or those projects that we don't want to sort of do in the morning hours. And you the the burden that gets lifted off your shoulders after, after that, one big item is ticked off your, your list. Um, yeah, it's just God there's. No, there's not a feeling like it. Um, and then, you know, optimizing my day with the, the Pomodoro technique. You know when I do need to get that focus time back, when my brain is foggy in the afternoon. Um, you know I'm not rewriting uh any, any of these, these resources out there. Uh, I don't have like the biggest. I don't have a trick that people probably haven't heard of, um, but I think I think trying to force yourself into a type of work uh practice that it doesn't necessarily work for you. Like, some people are night owls and some people do their best work, you know, after work hours.
Speaker 2:I don't think, especially being a travel agent, I don't think you necessarily need to condition yourself and put yourself in a mold that if it doesn't work for you. You know we are going to work remotely and a lot of us can sort of work across time zones and work, you know, know, sort of uh work within the times timeframes that work for them themselves. I have a um, a colleague that works from Luca, italy, and he, you know, takes advantage of his morning, but then, you know, he has this beautiful middle of the day before a lot of us are sort of at our desks, um, that he can take advantage of and you know, live that Dolce Vita lifestyle from Italy. And then you know work at night and it totally works for him. It just you know. We live in a world where you can do that, especially with remote work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, back in the olden days I had people out on the West Coast and they'd get up early in the morning because I was in New York and they were in the West Coast. They'd get up early in the morning because I was in New York and they were in the West Coast. They'd get up early in the morning, get all their work done and by noon they were able to go out and do other things because they were dealing with folks on Wall Street and in New York and it was all closed up by. Whatever the time zone differences are, I still can't calculate time zones well, even if it's just an hour Plus or minus, one is plus or minus one, it's just a very difficult equation for me, and I don't know why.
Speaker 2:But it's tricky. I you know there, I have a one app on my phone that anytime I need to just figure out whoever I'm speaking with what time zones we are in. Time buddy, that's my record for time zone apps. Yeah, just to just to make sure that we're all on the same page. But yeah, I mean, I think we're. We live in a day and age where there's we want to optimize and and just make the most of our time and try to get time back as much as possible. You know, I'm reading the 5am club, finishing that up, but then on the flip side, I'm reading 4000 weeks, which is a whole book dedicated to the fact that, you know, time is a commodity that we cannot get more of, and the hard truth of it all is we only have limited time, so you're not going to get to everything. So it's. I've got this sort of weird dichotomy going on and I'm excited to hear more about how you can then prioritize and say no to things there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's just got to be one of the biggest challenges that we all face, especially when you're an independent business owner and you're out there working on your own. And you're out there working on your own and you've got with most of the travel agents I know you've also got several kids running around. You're trying to be a mom and a wife and a parent and also run a business. That's a lot of stuff to have to keep all together.
Speaker 1:It's a bunch of hats to wear, obviously, whether you're a mom or a dad, of hats to wear, obviously, whether you're a mom or a dad. But I just happened to find that a lot of the travel agents I work with happen to be ladies and they've all got a number of hats that they wear because of that. So anyway, before I dig a deeper hole there, I'm going to hush. The fact is Going does some really wonderful things, could be a great resource for all of us. I plan to get on there as soon as we get off of here because I've got a trip coming up that I need to make sure I get booked properly.
Speaker 1:And you know, it's just. It's going to be fun getting out there and getting to know, going and getting to know you. Katie, Thanks for being here with us today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks so much for having me and Morris. I totally forgot to mention a lot of us might be familiar with going in when we were called Scott's Cheap Lights. We had rebranded a year ago, so we might have some former SCF fans out there. You know we're still the same great company. We just we wanted to be able to have a name that represented the fact that we are 75 person strong company. You know we're growing and we're going in new directions and you know we've got a bright future. We're trying to help more people get going.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great. That's absolutely outstanding. Well, katie, again, thank you so much for being with us here on the Travel Masters podcast. We appreciate it very much. And for everybody else out there y'all, get out there, go meet somebody new. This week that's my tagline, that's my advice to everybody. But get out there, go meet somebody new. You never can tell what's going to happen with a new relationship. Best wishes, have a great week and I'll see you again next time right here on the Travel Masters podcast. I'm