Scott Tomer was in town a couple weeks ago and I had a chance to sit down with him in a small group setting the night before the Saturday training. One of the other members of the group asked the question “Why don’t we [YTB] hand out more travel awards at Convention?”

What Scott told us, was the idea of Travel Awards did come up for Friday’s afternoon General Session at this years Convention. If you recall, Friday afternoon unleashed the industries best commission contracts and benefits in the industry, the upgrades for “Steals and Deals” and the enhanced Great Escapes packages for both Travel Store owners, and clients. With Friday afternoon dedicated to Travel it just made sense to offer Travel Awards. However, when they called the travel leaders in our company to ask if they would be at Convention, every one of them said “Yes, I’ll be at Funshine.”

The “Convention” our travel leaders were talking about begins today at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center. Funshine provides two days of seminars and a trade show floor with some 60 or 70 suppliers who are soliciting their products and services for your clients next vacation.

Funshine will also hold a General Session tonight to hand out awards for our travel leaders who have produced significant travel sales. There will be other upgrades and announcements; one of which is a new “skin” with additional features which you can get a feel for from with our Golf site. (Sorry, couldn’t hold back on this one, but since it’s already live…what the heck.)

The trade show floor of course is free, and those of us who have completed the Marc Mancini’s E-Campus series of courses also receive a complimentary upgrade to all the seminars offered by our preferred suppliers. (We also get to call ourselves “Travel Agents” and are upgraded to a 75% commission contract without quotas after completing the E-Campus courses.)

Here is a list I was able to obtain from the Home Office of the seminars and descriptions.

American Destinations
“Significantly grow your YTB Business with Educational Student Travel” Content for beginners and experienced agents alike.
ADI specializes in all-inclusive, multi-day group tour packages with an emphasis on Educational Student Travel.  YOU can have a hand in shaping our Nation’s youth and work toward your YTB $5,000 Matching Travel Commission Bonus!

Carnival Cruise Lines
(Friday) “Getting Started Selling Cruises – What you really need to know” – Beginner
(Saturday) “Super Sales with Carnival Cruise Lines” – This all-inclusive seminar will touch on the keys to great success selling cruises.  It’s a must attend event! – All levels are encouraged and welcome!

CCRA
“What’s new with CCRA”   This seminar speaks to those mostly already familiar with their product but they would love to include anyone wanting to learn more about who they are.
We will show you how to book hotels and other services – make more money and save time!

CLIA
“Cruise Vacations: an Introduction” This seminar is 3 hours and worth 15 CLIA credits once you have passed the test.

Collette Vacations
“How to make the most money in Travel Today!” For all levels of experience.
Deluxe escorted tours to all 7 continents, door to door transportation from the passenger’s home to the airport.  Our unmatched cancellation waiver protects your passenger.

Costa Cruise Lines
“Have you seen Costa lately?”  For both beginner and experienced agents.
Costa, Europe’s number one cruise line, offers an experience that is delightfully different in service and cruise.  In an atmosphere filled with love, laughter and La Dolce Vita.

Globus Family of Brands
“Globus Family of Brands; Product, Groups and Marketing” Balanced for beginners and experienced agents.
With more than 400 vacations to over 60 countries worldwide, the Globus Family of Brands offers a variety of travel styles to fit anyone’s budget or desire.

Holland America Line
“How to understand & sell Holland America Line, including in depth training on our Alaska vacations”  Balanced for beginners and experienced agents.
We invite you to sail with us and discover a world of elegant, mid-sized ships, award-winning service, intriguing onboard enrichment programs and sophisticated five-star dining.

Honeymoon Wishes
“The Honeymoon and Destination Wedding Market is still growing – Learn how to be a part of it.” For both beginner and experienced agents.
Clients can have any part of their honeymoon as a wedding present!  Earn commissions form their gift registry and market your business.

Pleasant Holidays
“The World of Pleasant” For both beginner and experienced agents.
Since 1959, Pleasant Holidays has sent over 9 million travelers on dream vacations.  Pleasant Holidays features hundreds of specials and value-packed vacations.

Princess Cruises / Cunard Lines
“The World of Princess Cruises” “The Legendary Voyages of Cunard Lines”
Escape completely with Princess Cruises to over 350 destinations and 105 unique itineraries.  Show your clients the world!

Silversea Cruises
“Selling the World of Silversea” Learn the value of selling an all inclusive luxury product and earn higher commissions. For both beginner and experienced agents Silversea Cruises is recognized as an innovator in the luxury segment, offering guests large-ship amenities aboard five intimate vessels, Silver Cloud, Silver Wind, Silver Shadow, Silver Whisper and Silver Spirit – all designed to offer an atmosphere of conviviality and casual elegance.

Steps of Paul Coastal Cruises
A unique cruise line navigating through the lands of the Bible, the Steps of the Apostle Paul and the Holy Lands.  Fundraising plans for your church groups.

Travelocity Partner Network
“Travel, Travel, Travel – Trends, Industry Knowledge and more” For both beginner and experienced agents.
A division of Travelocity, the industry leader in offering scalable and private label online travel solutions.  It builds your brand, not ours.

Travel Guard
Travel Insurance… How it benefits you and your customers
Travel Guard Insurance Regional Account Manager Nancy Mallek from Stevens Point WI, is curious if you know how easily you can increase your revenue by recommending travel insurance.  Join us for an informative session that will help you sell more.  Learn various tips on how to sell, why your customers should purchase, and ways to overcome objections.  Plus, everything you want to know about what is covered in a travel insurance policy.

Other suppliers who I don’t have course descriptions for but will be at Funshine to educate TSO’s who want to learn include Epic Tours, The Mark Travel Corporation, Worldwide Golf Vacations, MSC Cruises, Cunard Lines, Worldwide Tours, Inc., and Carey International.

When you take a look at the list of seminars above and then compare it to the Home Based Agent Show and Conference in Atlantic City in a little more than a week, it’s shocking to see how a single company like YTB can attract a similar segment and number of suppliers for its conference. I’d also be willing to bet that YTB will provide a larger crowd for Funshine compared to the Home Based Agent Show designed for an entire segment of the industry.

It should be a fun weekend with our peers who have a legitimate desire to learn and grow in the travel industry from suppliers who see YTB for what it truly is – the 25th largest Seller of Travel in the industry. 

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I was introduced to a book a couple of years ago by Chris Anderson entitled “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More “.  Mr. Anderson is the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. He wrote The Long Tail, which first appeared in Wired in October 2004 and then became a book in July, 2006.

While I usually find data and numbers extremely boring and it can make my head spin, Chris did an excellent job of injecting enough “layman’s speak” that kept my interest. I do enjoy reading about both business models and the men, (or woman in e-Bay’s case) who ran these successful businesses.

If your unfamiliar with just what The Long Tail is, and your in YTB, it’s best that you have a basic understanding of why this transition is important. In a nutshell, our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of mainstream products and markets at the “head” and toward a huge number of niches in the “tail”.

There are certainly examples of “heads” that are extremely successful, such as Wal-Mart for the mass appeal, or someone like a close friend of mine Nick McCulloch, who owns Link Your House, a specialty Home Automation and Security company. Here’s the rub concerning “real world” retailers. (Brick and Mortar) Due to exorbitant costs for space, you either need to select items that have a mass appeal, or scale back to reduce costs and attempt to focus on a niche market and hope there is enough of a local market to support your niche. 

An average movie theater will not show a film unless it can attract at least 1,500 people over a two-week run; that’s essentially the rent for a screen. An average record store needs to sell at least two copies of a CD per year to make it worth carrying; that’s the rent for a half inch of shelf space. And so on for DVD rental shops, videogame stores, booksellers, and newsstands.

In each case, retailers will carry only content that can generate sufficient demand to earn its keep. But each can pull only from a limited local population – perhaps a 10-mile radius for a typical movie theater, less than that for music and bookstores, and even less (just a mile or two) for video rental shops.

These costs however, drop dramatically in the digital world. Look at music stores like Rhapsody, a purely digital services with no manufacturing costs and minimal distribution fees. Because all music is stored in “bits and bytes”, The Who “Eminence Front“, a song or album that makes one sale per year has the same margins as a someone like Bruce Springsteen, “Working on a Dream” who will sell millions of copies after it’s debut at the end of the month. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing because both are just entries in a database which are called up on demand. This make BOTH equally worthy of being offered due minimal or no cost, while increasing profits. In The Long Tail, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability. Unlike the Wal-Mart’s of the world with a little sliver of space to hold a CD that equals a cost associated with the space, and even that little CD needs to help pay the rent.

In “Brick and Mortar”, if you had to pick between a 1982 version of an old rock classic, and a new hit that’s already getting buzz due to President Elect Obama, which CD would you be stocking your shelves with?

Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from DVDs at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo! Launch to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody. People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what’s available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture).

Combine enough small, obscure sales on the Long Tail and you’ve got a market bigger than even “The Boss” can produce.

Likewise,  in the case of books, the average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Personally, I can only find a book I’m looking for half the time in a book store. Sure, they can order it for me, but so can I through Amazon, AND have it delivered directly to my home without the need of getting a call to drive back down to the store to pick the book up. If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are.

In other words, the potential book market may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity. Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: “The biggest money is in the smallest sales.”

At this point, your asking yourself, “What in the world does that have to do with YTB?”

Take a look at all the niche sites this company offers in it’s digital arena. I know Travel Store Owners who specialize in Weddings and Honeymoons, others who specialize in Golf Packages, and still others like me, who specialize in cruises. Specialization is great, and I highly recommend that you find a couple of areas to specialize in when it comes to travel. But there are times when I run into areas I have no interest or knowledge in, but a potential customer or client may have a passion for.

A perfect example for me would be hunting. Honestly, I’d rather watch paint dry, but my In-Laws who I spent part of the Christmas break with are avid hunters. They also live about an hour and a half away from the nearest Bass Pro Shop. Is it out of the realm of possibility that they might have an interest in a new Hunting and Fishing web site that has comparable prices, that saves them both time and money?

That’s The Long Tail at work. I’m certainly not going to get rich off camouflage sales, but what did it cost me to carry the line as an Travel Store Owner?

Not a penny more than it did before I started…to sell cruises.

Let’s go back to Amazon for a minute. We all know them for their books and probably DVD’s and CD these days. What do you suppose happened that caused them to start selling groceries on a site known for books and DVD’s?? While you’re at it, you can fix the pesky light switch in their lighting and electrical department on isle five.

Are you thinking they might have lost it? Are they getting out of books because they’re making a mint off coffee and light bulbs? Or are they beginning to get the concept of The Long Tail?

Like Amazon who branched out in it’s distribution to capture ancillary sales, YTB is now moving into Food and Gifts, Home Decor, Financial Services, and Apperal and Accessories. Does that mean my passion has changed from cruises to carrot cake? Do I now need to be an expert or even remotely care about thread counts on pillow cases?

Hell no. Besides, if I did care about something like wellness and beauty, I could have gone with a century old MLM called Avon. (Unlike my love for a good steak or carrot cake, I don’t do makeup.)

I realize there are some who could never accept this shift in distribution. You need to remember, they’ll still hanging on to their “brick and mortar” theories and beliefs. Others will attempt to outwit and outsmart an experienced economic mind like Chris with their own excuses as to why this model simply won’t work.

So be it, if that’s their case. Just smile, nod your head, and say “Thanks for sharing”.

On a completely different note, and simply a followup on a previous post concerning Joystar just after Christmas.

It appears that a number of Agents have filed an involuntary bankruptcy case against Joystar in US Bankruptcy Court on Friday. They are seeking more than $150,000 in unpaid commissions that the agents claim are owed to them.

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The updates and upgrades keep coming from the YTB Home Office. Fresh off of Funshine East ’07, YTB’s Travel Trade Show held Friday and Saturday, October 5-6, in Orlando, FL, another major update has been made to the back office on the travel side of the business, YTB Travel Network. This new look and feel matches the updates and upgrades made back at the National Convention in August in St. Louis.

PS - If you're involved with YTB, sign up for our FREE Newsletter. As a Website Owner or Website Seller, we'll keep you up to date with all the latest news, acquisitions, and developments with YTB.

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