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
Crafting Unforgettable Journeys with Expert Insights
Ever wondered how to distinguish between a tour company and a travel advisor? Join us as we chat with Monica Irauzqui, co-owner and co-founder of Yampu Travel, who brings 27 years of industry wisdom to the table. Monica sheds light on the unique roles played by travel advisors, whether they operate independently or within a company. Discover how tour companies curate all-inclusive travel packages, handling everything from flights to guided tours, ensuring a smooth and hassle-free experience for travelers. Monica's expertise becomes particularly invaluable for advisors planning trips beyond their usual scope, like a family vacation to the Netherlands, allowing them to uphold high standards without the need for exhaustive research.
In this episode, we also highlight the importance of personalizing travel experiences and the unparalleled value of insider knowledge. Monica shares tales from recent European escapades and exciting plans for Chile, emphasizing the role of travel advisors in crafting unique, off-the-beaten-path journeys. Learn about the nuances of various travel options, from different ticket types for Machu Picchu to the perks of upgrading cruise accommodations. We offer practical tips for travel advisors on collaborating with tour companies, ensuring they can meet clients' budgets and enhance their service offerings. Don't miss this insightful conversation packed with expert advice and inspiring travel stories!
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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? What's the difference in a tour company and a travel advisory? Good question. Huh, never thought about it until today, when I met Monica Israowski. I want to make sure I got Monica's name right Monica Israowski. She is the co-owner and co-founder of Yampu Travel and she's with us here today on the Travel Masters podcast. Monica, thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. Well, first of all, in travel there's not super consistency between the words and the phrases that you just pointed out. So what? I think the definition. Somebody else may have another definition, For example, travel advisor. I feel like there's travel advisors that work for tour companies like mine. There's travel advisors that work for more conventional travel agencies. A travel advisor is anyone that's giving you advice on travel. I own a tour company and I work with clients directly. I also work with a lot of travel agencies and so those you may find in your hometown under lots of different names. They can be small, they can be big, like American Express, or they can be small, just mom and pop travel agencies, and those people. They will come to me because I have experience doing a trip from beginning to end for your clients, so, and I put together a private, customized tour, which means that I am selling you a trip with everything you need for one price.
Speaker 2:A travel agent. Sometimes they'll sell trips like mine, a tour, or sometimes they'll just do a few services for you, and it really depends on the agency, and every agency has a different rule. You know it comes down these days to their time. You know, um, you know, and uh, the the cost of their time, you know. So a lot of travel companies now do want to sell the whole packet. It makes everything smoother. Um and um, you know we negotiate, uh, to get the clients really good rates. Um, so I, I negotiate, like with wholesalers, um, to get, get a good rate and then mark it up rather than selling a hotel that might give you eight or 10%. Uh, you know that we're we're going working with the kind of rates that maybe Expedia gets you know. So that tour company will be the one that puts everything together for you.
Speaker 2:So we are starting with possibly airfare not always, but definitely all the airfare inside the itinerary inside the country where you're traveling. It's going to include, from the time they get to the airport, somebody is going to be there with a sign with your client's name on it they're going to. You know, usually it depends on the country. Usually we try to have a guide and a driver, so the driver's waiting in the car and the guide is in the airport. So this is really smooth.
Speaker 2:In some countries, where that service is overly expensive, we may just have a driver guide, and so we have the experience in over 70 countries to know, to give you, as a travel advisor, the advice of which way we should go on that, and to give you the details so that when you tell your client, you're telling them the correct thing. And that's one of the most important things for me working with a travel advisor is that you and I are communicating all every single possible detail, and then I'm working with a travel advisor that also will be communicating what I tell her or him to those clients, so that's a really important part of our relationship together.
Speaker 1:Let's say, then, that I'm a travel agent out there working and doing my thing and my expertise, my level of the work that I'm doing mainly, is right now in my world. I'm sending families to Disney World. But I get a call from a client says gee, we want to go to the Netherlands. I've never booked a trip outside the country yet, I've never even booked a trip to the Netherlands at all. Hmm, I can call Monica and we can work together on that trip. We'll both earn our commission, our work on this thing, but Monica will make sure my client has the very best experience ever, and that way I can do that without me having to take months and days and time to learn all the things that I'd have to learn if I was going to do all those details myself. Have I got the idea right?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That's exactly what we do.
Speaker 1:Good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I would not be the one to call for Disney, but I would be the one to call for the Netherlands.
Speaker 1:And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. I have several clients that specialize in Disney and do a wonderful deal with it and understand Disney's commissions are not as high as they are from other alternatives, but these folks love it and they do a great job, and you certainly can't go to Walt Disney World without some professional help. I'll tell you that.
Speaker 2:It really is good, if you're going to Disney, to have somebody that understands it and knows the ins and outs, because it's not an easy product to sell and I believe that they have to go through some training to work with Disney. So it's definitely good to have somebody who specializes in Disney to go there, and that's absolutely what we would do. We would give you all the guides, all the drivers, all the. Sometimes some countries require permits. Um, I recommend hotels and I'm really picky about the hotels that I use.
Speaker 2:Um, and and having the experience in each and every one of the countries that we sell, we know good companies for bad companies. You're not just rolling a dice, you know it's. It's something that we've had experience with it. We are. We rely on agents and clients to come back to us. So our number one incentive and motive in every trip is to make it so wonderful that that client comes back to you as a travel agent again to do another trip the next year. And I want you to call me again and because you know, just selling one trip it's a lot of work, and then if I have to go find a new client, that's a lot of work. So we want to make everything perfect so that the relationship continues. That's where the money is, is when you continue a smooth and good relationship.
Speaker 1:Well, the fact is, I would much rather do business with a client or a prospect that I've already built a level of trust with. If I've already built that level of trust, then it's a heck of a lot easier to pick up and start doing business for one of my clients, if you will, than it is to try and find a stranger to build a relationship with and start doing business with Exactly so that makes perfect sense to me. Monica, how in the world did you go from just general travel into being a tour company?
Speaker 2:uh, we started off as a tour company from the beginning because, uh, when my husband and I met in 1998, we went to machu picchu together in peru and my husband is from peru but he'd never been because I don't know, people in lima don't back in those days didn't travel a lot out lima, um, um. So we went and we booked a package that included Cusco, sacred Valley, all the guides and hotels and the train, and back then you didn't need permits. But now you, to go to Machu Picchu, you, you definitely need a specialist because there's five different tickets you can get and there's different hikes above it and different ways, five or ten different kinds of trains, you know so. So, yeah, so we had bought a package back in those days when it was much simpler, um, and then my husband said you know, I don't think a lot of people are going to peru. There used to be terrorism, but now there's not.
Speaker 2:So let's start doing that, selling packages like we bought. And he had come from a retail background and love the idea of not having to put hundreds of thousands of dollars into inventory to start a store. So we, uh, we decided to do this. It was less investment, um, and every year. We've been doing this for 27 years and every year we do several trips um. You know, we just got back from six weeks um in europe and we're going, uh, at the end of the month, to chile for a month.
Speaker 1:So on business or pleasure? I mean, is that a month worth of working in europe?
Speaker 2:that was four weeks of work and two weeks pleasure.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, good.
Speaker 2:And the month in Chile will be all work, and we've been to Chile many times, but we're going to see some new hotels that we haven't worked with before. We're going to a travel meeting there and we are also. My husband hasn't been to Easter Island. I've been, so we're, we're, I'm going to backtrack and do that with him to see any new hotel that wasn't open when I was there. Um, so you know a lot of the places we're going, we've been before, but there's a hotel that we're interested in and or a new experience about. There's a hotel that we're interested in and or a new experience, um, so that's what we do is like, uh, we've been traveling all these 27 years, um, you know, and you know, really, looking, and nowadays travel is so much more popular than it was when I started. So nowadays, my new challenge is to get people into wonderful destinations, wonderful experiences, but a little bit off the beaten track. So they're not with 100,000 people in Florence in the middle of August.
Speaker 1:You know yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. So that's my new challenge and it's always sort of been something I've been interested in because I always like to do things differently than everybody else. Um, so I've always kind of looked for out of the ordinary places and experiences and always try to put those into each and every itinerary. For example, in peru, I used to tell my sales people look, so many people are selling in Peru. I want each and every traveler to come back and say I love the people, I love the food, I love the nature and I want them to have some kind of special experience.
Speaker 2:That's not just I went and checked Machu Picchu off the list, which is an amazing place and great. Check that off the list. But I want Peru has so much more than just that and I want them coming back understanding that you know, and so that's kind of been our rule that that sets us apart from other companies is that we're we're going to do things and surprise people and delight people, cause you know, if you're a traveler and you don't have a good travel advisor, you don't know what to ask for. You don't know what all the possibilities are.
Speaker 2:That's the wonderful thing about working with a travel advisor is that we know what questions to ask yeah you might not know that there's 16 different kinds of trains or you know seven different types of tickets for machu picchu. I saw so many people the last time I was in machu picchu, disappointed because they had a ticket that only goes to the bottom and doesn't go up around the top, and that's because they probably booked uh, last minute. Maybe they booked directly and, and you know, the better tickets sell out early. Um travel advisor will know that that specializes in Peru. And if you don't know it, you come to someone like me who knows it. You know, but you don't. You don't even know that that specializes in peru. And if you don't know it, you come to someone like me who knows it. You know, but you don't. You don't even know that's a pot. You don't even know. That's a question to ask if you're not working with a specialist right, right, it's just like the.
Speaker 1:The simple example I love to use is you go on an ocean cruise for the first time. You don't realize that just for a few bucks more you can have a balcony, or you could have a window, a porthole, yeah, yeah, you don't have to have a box with no way in and no way out except that door. Yeah, but folks don't know that. They just know, well, that's the least expensive or the least cost, so I want to choose that one. They don't realize that there are other alternatives that are not that much more expensive, that are going to make it such a much more pleasurable experience yeah, expensive, that are going to make it such a much more pleasurable experience.
Speaker 1:It is absolutely amazing. Well, monica, it sounds like you've got a lot of great experience doing this. What are the first couple of things that come to mind when you think about somebody maybe that hasn't used a tour company before? What would you recommend that they do, or when should they think about? Give me some help for these folks that we're talking to here today.
Speaker 2:How would you help them? Today Are you talking about for a travel advisor that has not used a tour company or a client?
Speaker 1:A travel advisor out there, a travel agency, a travel advisor. What kind of advice can you give them about using a travel company and a tour company and how that all might work best?
Speaker 2:I think it's good if you have a budget. It's one of the most uncomfortable questions we can ask clients and I'm actually really bad at it because clients don't know what to answer sometimes. You know, because they don't want to tell you too much and you use every last penny but they don't want to tell you too little and then they miss out on some opportunities. So if you have a tour company like mine that you're interested in looking at, take a look at our trips that are online. I rarely sell a trip that's online. I always do something different for every client, but it does give you an idea of the cost. You know, because those, those prices on the website do have travel agent commission built into them. So you can look at that and say, okay, here's a 10 day trip to Chile. You know it's a $7,000 a person, would that be in your budget? And the client says yes or no, and then the client will give you no, I'd rather do five, or yeah, I can do up to 10, you know. And then you get a real, a real number that you could start to work with and and that's how I would do that. So one thing is you know to maybe have the budget in mind. Have you know the the typical questions that you know the client, how long they can travel, how many people, and give the tour company as much information about your client as possible, because if you're working with a tour company like mine that is private and personalized, it's going to be a better tour. The more I know about the client going to be a better tour, the more I know about the client.
Speaker 2:If you're working with a tour company that's putting people in groups, which is not what I do, then you could just look at what's on their website and then ask the client about it. But for me, I build it for you. I build something that's unique for you and your client. So I need to know as much about how mobile they are. I need to know as much about you know how mobile they are. Will they get on a horse? Will they do hiking? Do they prefer all van tours? You know, do they want to go snorkeling? Do they? You know as many details as you can possibly give and then, if you're working with me or anyone else, ask some questions. This is the first thing I would do Ask them five or six questions and see if you get a complete, detailed answer, or do they blow you off?
Speaker 1:Hey, by the way, you may want to contact Monica about a tour or learn more about Yompu Travel, so here's how you get in touch with her. Monica's email address is monica M-O-N-I-C-A at yamputravelcom. That's monica at Y-A-M-P-U dot com and the website again is yampucom or Y-A-M-P-U dot com.
Speaker 2:If they blow you off or they don't answer the question or they answer a different question. You know this is not a presidential debate. Okay, we have to answer the question. You know this is not a presidential debate. Okay, we have to answer the question. You know, so, you know, so you know that's a good way to see if you've got a good tour company, because our business is all about details. And if they can't even answer the five questions you asked and that I have that with my local teams, you know I don't work with local teams that will not get into details with me, that want me to just buy some cookie cutter thing, that's not what we're doing, you know. So that's a kind of a way that you can test. If you're, if you're working with a new company and you don't want to waste a lot of time on that first email, just ask them about five questions and see what kind of answers you get. And are they, are they complete? Did they really answer the question?
Speaker 2:And that's that's one of my best things that I would tell you to do and just, you know, be as communicative and then make sure that you're reading all the answers and also passing that on. I've had that. That's one thing that can happen, you know that will mess up something is if all that information from me doesn't get passed to you, doesn't get passed to the client. You know, and it's a lot of information and what I find that sometimes we can over and I do it to myself with clients, sometimes I can overload them with information. So when we send a confirmation email and then when we send the documents, it's a good idea to get me and the travel advisor and maybe even the client all together on the phone and go over all of those documents and I I'd even find sometimes I'll even find something that I need to do as I'm going over it and they ask me a question and I'll be like, oh, let me look into that for you, you know, and then I'll go back and and cross that T and dot that I.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to ask you if you ever actually work one-on-one with the client themselves, as well as with the advisor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we have a lot of clients that have been traveling with us for 10, 15 years directly and our breakdown is about 20% travel advisors and 80% direct. But when I work with a travel advisor, I mean I've also had those travel advisors using me with the same client, year after year after year, and that works really well because you know the client then knows us, and as well as their travel advisor, and so it's a good relationship that we like to keep everyone happy.
Speaker 1:And it's all about relationships. It really is. I don't care what we're doing. It's always all about relationships. Monica, thank you so much for being on the Travel Masters podcast with me today. I've learned a lot. I didn't know all these things and you've educated me well. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. It's been a great time. I wish you the very best and look forward to maybe even doing this again sometime.
Speaker 2:All right, I would like that. Let me know if you have a question or a destination you want to go over and we'll do it.
Speaker 1:Sounds great For everybody else out there. Y'all go out and make it a great week, have a good time, talk about your business, and I'll see you again next time right here on the Travel Masters podcast. My name is Morris Sims. You.