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BUILD YOUR WEDDINGS & HONEYMOONS NICHE WITH THIS GUIDE
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A TRAVEL AGENT’S GUIDE TO WEDDINGS & HONEYMOONSBuild Your Wedding & Honeymoons Niche With This Guide
Steve Crowhurst, CTC
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A Travel Agent’s Guide To Weddings & Honeymoons Copyright © 2013 Steve Crowhurst, SMP Training Co.All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. No part of this book may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval systemor transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwisewhatsoever without written permission or authorization through payment of a Permission to Copy fee (except in thecase of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews) . For information please contact SMP Training [email protected] or call 250-738-0064.
Protected by the Canadian Copyright Act.
For general information on SMP publications and services please email: [email protected]
Illustrations by Steve Crowhurst.
Limit of liability/disclaimer of warranty: SMP Training Co., publisher and the author make no representations orwarranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim allwarranties, including without limitation, warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be createdor extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable forevery situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author is not engaged in renderinglegal or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professionalperson should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising here from. The factthat an organisation or website is referred to in this work as a citation and / or potential source of further informationdoes not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information, the organisation or website may provideor recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet websites listed in this work mayhave changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.
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CONTENTS PAGE
Introduction & Welcome 4
The International Symbol For Marriage 5
Reasons Couple Marry and Divorce 5
Marriage Is A Renewable Resource 6
Divorce Rates Around The World 7
Wedding Planners Know Stats 8
More Stats That Wedding Planners Know 10
Your Planning Chart 11
Find Your Resource Source 12
Listening, Looking and Going Viral 13
Boost Your Post 14
Wedding Planners Know FREE Stuff 15
Re-Inventing Your Role 16
Wedding Planner Certification 17
Your Edge Is Sharper 18
Wedding Types 19
Weddings At Sea 22
Other Culture Weddings 23
MARKETING IDEAS 24
Getting The Message Out 25
Moon Marketing 31
Types of Moons 32
Inbound Moons 33
Anniversary Travel 34
Wedding Couple Content 35
About The Author 36
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Welcome and Introduction
The weddings, honeymoons and romance niche is one that every travel agent can add to theirportfolio of services. To specialize in this niche means a hefty learning curve that will pay off inhuge commissions depending upon how deluxe and how worldwide you wish to take theopportunity.
Being a travel agent for some years now allows you to add additional “hats” to the ones youalready wear. Your knowledge of the world, the suppliers and seasonality can set you up as oneof the more professional wedding planners.
In this guide you are urged to become a Certified Wedding Planner (CWP) as the training coursewill help you better understand event planning as it applies to arranging weddings andhoneymoons locally and overseas – also to assist inbound clients wanting to wed and honeymoonin your country. Another reason to attain your CWP is this: when you review wedding planningsites the consumer has often stated they prefer to deal with a CWP versus a generic travel agent.
Adding the Certified Wedding Planner designation to your existing CTC, CTIE, ACC, MCC etc., willadd to your professional status and you might want to combine your love of selling cruises to anew love of selling and arranging weddings at sea. It’s just a new style of destination weddingand the beach resort has been exchanged for the ship. Nice!
So over to you. Enjoy the read. Put the information to good use and if you need help use thecoaching program shown below.
Wishing you every success!Best regardsSteve Crowhurst
Introduction & WelcomeTHE TRAVEL AGENT’S STORE COACHING PROGRAM
To help you get the maximum benefit from your purchase The Travel Agent’s Storeoffers a free coaching session with the author of the e-Guide. The coaching sessionslast for up to one-hour and are conducted via Skype. Once you have read through andstudied this e-Guide jot down any questions, challenges you have, then email [email protected] to arrange a coaching date and time.
Be sure to take advantage of this offer!
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This is an absolute fact and one of the main reasons so many travelagents enter into this specific niche. People get married, they
divorce and then remarry… and that means:
It’s about a 30% repeat business as the stats have changed from one in two marriages failing.Couples are working harder at keeping their marriage alive and so the stats are now around onein three. It’s a good idea to check the stats where you live and with the data you uncover you’llbe better prepared for when you start marketing.
In the UK for instance:
Latest statistics (published December 2012) estimate that 42% of marriages in England andWales end in divorce. It is also estimated that:
Chance of divorce is greatest between the 4th and 8th wedding anniversaries.
34% of marriages are expected to end in divorce by the 20th wedding anniversary.
An additional 6% of marriages are expected to end by the 20th wedding anniversary
because one of the spouses has died.
Therefore 60% of marriages are expected to survive to the 20th anniversary.
16% of marriages reach the 60th wedding anniversary.
The average marriage is expected to last for 32 years.
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The following results come from a USA 2012 survey:
1. The USA survey was based on 350,000 destination weddings
2. Of the 350,000 destination weddings 70% stayed domestic, 30% went international
3. 51% of the destination wedding couples used a certified wedding planner
Source: TheKnot.com, WeddingChannel.com Debut Second Destination Weddings Study by Kerry Medina June 19, 2012
Point #3 is why you might want to considerstudying for your CWP certification.
Check into the stats and facts surrounding destination weddings in your area. The informationmay be the same as the above or it may differ. From the North American travel agents point ofview, the biggest opportunity from the above list, is Europe. Only showing 6%.
That 6% actually suggests a HUGE opportunity. You could be the first in your community to beoffering a wedding and honeymoon program to Europe and in a host of romantic places such asVenice, Paris or Prague - and to do that you’ll work directly with your suppliers or the touristboard of your chosen European destination to develop a custom program.
If you think Europe might factor into your overall wedding and honeymoon offers, whichEuropean country, city, place or area would you like to promote?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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IMAGINE THE MOOLA!
SERVICE
FEES
WEDDING
PLANNING FEES
CO-ORDINATION
FEES
WED’ & H’MOON
COMMISSIONS
SUPPLIER
COMMISSION
Charge your usualper hour rate.
(If you don’t haveone, price it now!)
All-in project feeto handle
‘everything’associated with
the wedding.
All-in project feeto co-ordinateeverything andlet your clients
book it.
Monies from
arrangements
made directly
with providers.
Monies earnedfrom
arrangementsbooked with
suppliers.
You are already a travel agent and you may also be a certified travel agent, and a certified seller of cruiseswith another four or five specialty credentials too. Now you can add another and very lucrative credentialto your current certifications: the CWP – Certified Wedding Planner.
Be sure to use your 5 to 30 years in the travel industry and promote the fact that you are now a CertifiedWedding Planner – the two are a perfect fit. This combination opens up more money making opportunitiesre service fees, commissions, planning fees and more as explained above.
There are co-ordination fees which you apply when you planned it all and hand it off to your clients tofollow through on the booking. Perhaps you didn’t win the wedding – but you won the honeymoon andmade commissions there. There are more ways to generate income as you can see. Think about your feesand complete the boxes below.
SERVICE
FEES
WEDDING
PLANNING FEES
CO-ORDINATION
FEES
WED – H’MOON
COMMISSIONS
SUPPLIER
COMMISSION
$ $ $ $ $
It’s important to know your value and worth and how much you will charge for when someone you’reyour rates. Your scripted response starts with: “Well the pricing depends on many things…” – now youqualify your client.
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The first step in marketing your wedding and honeymoon planning and booking services is tolet your existing clients know about your new niche and the quickest and easiest method to dothat is email. A simple text message will work.
Do not pick and choose recipients thinking your older clients wouldn’t be interested. Fact isthey have adult children, and they in turn have children of marrying age and on it goes. Thenthere are friends and other relatives, and their friends too. Once your message has beenreceived, in some cases, it will be forwarded. The key to having your information forwarded isto send out something worth forwarding.
(The text is enlarged only for display in the Guide – use your usual font size.)
To support your initial announcement you can attach a PDF brochure, or add a link to your website andthe Weddings and Honeymoon web page where more information can be found. It would be a great ideato create your own digital eBrochure using Issuu (www.issuu.com) and have that eBrochure ready to clickand read on you weddings web page.
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http://www.moonphases.info/full_moon_calendar_dates.html
Moon marketing ties into both your weddings and yourhoneymoon sales. If you are focused on honeymoonarrangements only, there many ways to market yourhoneymoon services. First things first, it’s a good idea toknow all about THE MOON and especially when a full moonis about to happen and the reason for that is this: weddingscaptured or couples captured photographically against a fullmoon are awe inspiring. You might even arrange for yourwedded couple to have their honeymoon photographsession taken in a specific location where the full moon canbe seen behind them.
On the full moon chart above, the summer months areblocked off and if this was the time period in your area thatis most favoured for weddings, you would be marketing yourservices months in advance of those dates. In this way,readers of your promotion might just rearrange their datesto fit into the full moon schedule and bring their business toyou.
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Click here to join The Travel Agent’s Store member list.
About The Author
Steve CrowhurstTravel trade keynote speaker, trainer, author &publisher.
Steve entered the retail travel industry in 1965 and hasworked from the front line to the executive floor, ownedand operated his own travel agencies, travel tradetraining and consulting firms and has worked from a homeoffice for over 20 years.
In 2010 he published his 412 page book 273 “No Fluff - NoTheory” Marketing Ideas for Travel Agents; in June 2011he published the first digital issue of Selling Travelmagazine, this was followed by Travel Agency Managerand Travel Trade Supplier magazines in early 2013. InOctober 2013 Steve published the first issue of IC TravelAgent a digital magazine targeting the home-based travelagent, ICs and OSRs.
Steve is now turning all of his workshops and webinarsinto easy to read, street savvy eGuides. Check back oftenat www.thetravelagentsstore.com for new titles.
If you would like Steve to speak at your conference orconvention, deliver management level webinars or workwith your executive team please email him directly:[email protected]
A complete bio can be read here.
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