World-changing travel should be the only way we travel. Meg Salter wraps it up beautifully in what travel is about:
“Exploration, adventure, personal development, being out of one’s comfort zone, finding a state of peace, excitement, bringing people together.”
Exactly the sort of holiday that you want to have. The resulting narratives are important for travel agents to capture and distill for customers and ensure survival as an agent in the future.
What are the differences between a holiday and the trip of a lifetime? Heavily backed by the experience of Mona Tannous, by the incredible experience of a solar eclipse in the desert with my wife Sasha and across a decade of thousands of interactions with travel agents through roomsXML has led me to creating
Five tips for creating a travel experience that change a person’s world:
1. Engage, engage, engage
Get those metaphorical hands dirty, get off the tour bus and get into the thick of it. The shock of the exploration needs to be so strong that someone can’t shut up about it. Especially when they are telling their friends about your awesome travel service.
2. Customise, not package
Personalised versus group. We are all different. Sasha loves India but does not like travelling around India. My mate Len loves the bump of the Autorickshaw to keep him in the real world. You need to understand where your customer feels comfortable and encourage them to step just beyond that for the experience worth having.
3. Time to digest
There is no point cramming in so much that you can’t remember it all. Have a busy day and then a day off. Have a half day of excitement and a half day of massage. Create the space to reflect and appreciate the shattering experience that just happened.
4. When & if to upgrade
The flight home is the worst leg. All of those great experiences, luxury, food…. Just to be trapped between a smelly person and the toilet for 15 hours with immigration ahead…. business class on the homeward leg is a great way to cement those great memories. Upgrading on the way over is forgotten about.
5. Get away from the tourist drag
Any average Joe can use a website and book their own holiday and visit all the same sights and sounds as their friends. Ultimately they have absolutely nothing to talk about when they get home. So get them out of the coffee shops in Amsterdam , the shopping centres in Dubai and the bars in Bali and give them something unique that they’ve never heard of.