A self-proclaimed perfectionist, Erica Carr stumbled into travel in 2019, booking a jaw-dropping 100 trips her first year … just in time for the worldwide pandemic. But ain’t no pandemic stopping this lady. Nope, Erica and her team of three employees are on track to bring in $2.2M in sales for 2022!

Bookitbox TRAVEL is a luxury travel agency with a spin. Every client gets a box pre-departure with travel info and gifts personalized to their unique itinerary. As they say at Bookitbox, “All boxed up and TSA approved.” Join us as we take a peek inside her boxes and Erica shares why she thinks the boxes have been so instrumental in helping her agency grow. 

Oh, and copy cats. Most of us face them at one time or another. As you’ll find out, Erica is entirely transparent in what she does with the boxes and how it’s helped. So how does she deal with other businesses taking pages from her playbook? It might surprise you! 😊 

We’ll chat with Erica on how she made the transition from never having really traveled in the high-end luxury space ended up opening a successful agency that has a $10k minimum spend for clients. She’ll share with us her approach of ‘loving on her clients’ and how she surprises clients throughout their journey with small gifts and unexpected touchpoints.  

We’ll also touch on how she used the pandemic to systematize her agency so that coming out of the pandemic, she saw hockey stick growth in her sales. Through all this, she grew her team of employees throughout the US. If you’re wondering how to manage a remote team and hire the right people for your agency without being able to be in the same office, Erica has some tips for you on that too. 

Settle in and get ready as we take a deep dive into yet another success agency owner’s story!

****** Special thanks to our sponsor, Levarte Travel: https://hostagencyreviews.com/hosts/levarte-travel ******

 ****** Transcript + Show Notes: https://har.news/vol24

Travel Agent Chatter

Trascript + Show Notes

Vol 24 | $0 to 2.2M in 4 (pandemic) years. Surprise travel box w/goodies for clients. Meet Erica!

****** Transcript + Show Notes: https://har.news/vol29

Special thanks to today’s sponsor: Caffeine

Today’s guest is a former professional fundraiser who put those skills to work and went from travel being a part time job on the side in 2017 to full time in June 2018. 

Here’s the thing to know though. Even with $2.5M in sales, that’s not the metric our guest watches. This travel advisor has niched down into groups—both destination weddings and celebrations groups—with a minimum of 10 rooms and an average spend of $500-1000 per guest, per day. 

The metric she does watch is the steady income that comes from her group booking fee of $5,000 per group and the 18 clients that are in her VIP club where there is a $6.5k a year annual retainer that has a minimum annual travel spend of $50k, and that doesn’t include air. 

For today’s guest, commission is just icing on the cake. 

Courtnie Nichols is a study in crafting the business of your dreams by thinking about what you want out of life and reverse engineering your business to fit the lifestyle you want. She only books one destination wedding a month. She takes most of Friday off and focuses on self-care. She lays out who she wants to work with and sticks to it. And December? Forget about it! She and the TravelBash team take the entire month of December off.

So come along for an inspirational conversation with a travel advisor who isn’t afraid to do things differently and by doing so, has found a work-life balance others dream of and a steady income stream that no pandemic or natural disaster can wreak havoc on.

Transcript +Show Notes

Vol 29 5k group booking fee. 6.5k retainer w/50k min annual spend. Content marketing. Meet Courtnie

We’ve got two listening delights for you on this channel, folks! 😲 

The first is Travel Agent Chatter (TAC), a spotlight interview of a wide variety of travel advisors that we publish every quarter. 

The second is our shorter, but more frequent Friday 15 series, where every Friday we answer your travel industry questions for — you guessed it — 15 minutes!

Travel Agent Chatter -- a Host Agency Reviews audio series -- talks about all things travel. We specialize in-depth interviews with travel agents from all walks of life.

Whether you’re a new or experienced travel advisor, we help you up your game by sharing where other travel agencies have found success and offering inspiring stories from the front lines!

Transcripts, videos and show notes of the TAC episodes can be found at https://hostagencyreviews.com/TAC

And every Friday at 12pm CT we publish the Friday 15 to our TAC feed. It’s 15 minutes over the lunch hour, where we answer your travel industry questions. Submit your questions and watch videos of the Friday 15 at https://hostagencyreviews.com/friday15.

Travel Agent Chatter and the Friday 15 are hosted by Steph Lee, the founder of the website Host Agency Reviews and travel industry veteran. She's insatiably curious. A lover of travel, writing, gardening & the stars. Most importantly, she ♥'s her dogs, Fennec and Orion!

Vol 29 5k group booking fee. 6.5k retainer w/50k min annual spend. Content marketing. Meet Courtnie

Travel Agent Chatter :and: Friday 15

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